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The 

Peril of Hifalutin 



BY 

HUNTINGTON WILSON 

FORMERLY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, ETC. 
AUTHOR OF "STULTITIA" (SAVE AMERICA) 




NEW YORK 
DUFFIELD & COMPANY 

1918 



Copyright, 1918, by 
DUFFIELD & COMPANY 



JUN 26 1318 

©GLA497940 









2 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface 

I. The Duty of Criticism 3 

II. The Use and Abuse of Partisanship . 8 

III. The Art of Administration .... 14 

IV. The Peril of Hifalutin 29 

V. Ultra-Radicalism and the War ... 37 

VI. " American Bolsheviki ' ' 43 

VII. Ultra-Idealism and Diplomacy ... 51 

VIII. Sentimentality and Reality ... 59 

IX. Immigration and Labor 67 

X. Reform and Restraint 72 

XI. The English-Speaking Alliance . . 77 

XII. Japan, Russia and the War .... 93 

XIII. America, Japan and the War . . . 101 

XIV. China, America and Japan .... 107 
XV. War Diplomacy in Latin America . 113 

XVI. The Colombian Treaty 117 

XVII. Equity vs. Ruthlessness 134 

XVIII. Socialization 145 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIX. New Nationalism 158 

XX. A British Programme ...... 176 

XXI. Human Nature and Social Theory . 193 

XXII. An American View 209 

XXIII. The War of the Unborn 216 

XXIV. Some Phases of Foreign Policy . . 226 
XXV. Faith and Works 234 

Appendix: "Dollar Diplomacy' ' . . 240 



PREFACE 

The object of this little volume is to emphasize 
the need of attention by the average American to the 
necessity of a realistic and practical consideration of 
our national problems and to warn against the dan- 
gers to America in meeting such problems, namely, 
the dangers of hifalutinism, of unsound idealism, of 
wild radicalism, and of ultra-conservatism. If 
America is to be made safe, whether in war or in 
peace, the average American in his overwhelming 
numbers must rise up and combat these perils. If 
the average American fails to study the nation's 
questions and to acquire and insist upon a realistic 
and practical point of view in dealing with them, 
then he himself will bring upon his country the 
crowning peril of all; he will write down public in- 
difference as the epitaph of democracy with constitu- 
tional liberty through republican representative gov- 
ernment. 

A desire to contribute, however slightly, to a reali- 
zation of the perils mentioned, and to a realization of 



PREFACE 

the fact that only by vigilance and study can the 
average American combat them and himself help re- 
move the unbounded peril of popular indifference, is 
the excuse for making the following comment avail- 
able in convenient form. It will be quite evident that 
no pretense is made of an exhaustive study of the sub- 
jects treated. The aim is rather to try to develop a 
realistic, practical and really American viewpoint; 
to call attention to a few typical questions which are 
the battle ground on which hifalutinism, unsound 
idealism, wild radicalism, and ultra-conservatism are 
to be fought ; and to set forth some observations upon 
these matters which it is hoped may possibly be of 
some slight suggestive value. 

My thanks are due the editor of the Public 
Ledger for his kind permission to include in this book 
various articles which appeared in that newspaper. 
There is included, also, as an appendix, a monograph 
from the Annals of the American Academy of Po- 
litical and Social Science, November, 1916. Its at- 
tempted analysis of the relation of Government to 
foreign investment comprises some discussion of 
American diplomacy, — especially of the much misun- 
derstood "dollar diplomacy,' ' to which allusion is 
made in the text. 

Huntington Wilson. 

Philadelphia, April 30, 1918, 



THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 



The Peril of Hifalutin 



THE DUTY OF CRITICISM 

It is a duty of citizenship to give thought very 
earnestly to many questions of means to win the war 
and also to many large questions of policy that now 
brood over the future of our country. ' ' Stand behind 
the President/ ' " Don't rock the boat," etc., are good 
enough cries in their place ; but they cannot be made 
conveniently to cover the multitude of all our sins. 
To make of them an excuse for the indolent shirking 
of thought and responsibility is to abuse them. 

At this time the one paramount national aim is vic- 
tory over the Teutonic power. The President sym- 
bolizes that national aim. In it all citizens worthy the 
name give the Administration whole-hearted, unmur- 
muring support — ready to go "to the last man and 
to the last dollar. " But this is not the citizen's whole 
duty. To win the war is the country's substantive 
policy. It is its policy in re. That is beyond ques- 
tioning discussion. Questioning discussion of it dam- 

3 



4 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

ages the national interest and is unpatriotic. Along- 
side but distinct from that is the broad field of the 
country's adjective policy, its policy in modo. In 
this field fall questions of efficiency in ways and 
means, and there also may be placed questions of 
policy concatenated with our new associations, prob- 
lems and relations, present and future, arising out of 
the war and out of our paramount policy to help win 
the war. This field is a proper field for discussion. 
In this field it is not questioning discussion, but the 
neglect of it, that may damage the national interest 
and that is unpatriotic. Here lie many matters that 
must not drift to decision through default of any clear 
mandate of public opinion. If the President seeks 
to reflect public opinion rather than to lead it, how 
shall he be guided if public opinion remain unin- 
formed or inarticulate? Here is what the President 
himself has said on this subject: 

"I can imagine no greater disservice to the country 
than to establish a system of censorship that would 
deny to the people of a free republic like our own 
their indisputable right to criticize their own public 
officials. While exercising the great powers of the 
office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one 
through which we are now passing to lose the benefit 
of patriotic and intelligent criticism.' ' 

To the ordinary powers of the Executive Congress 
has by law added almost limitless ones. Unlike Ger- 



THE DUTY OF CRITICISM 5 

many, we have no legislative committee to participate 
in the framing of policies. Unlike France and Brit- 
ain, we have no cabinet responsible to our Legislature. 
Unlike any other democratic country, our Cabinet 
cannot "fall" except at four-year intervals; our 
Cabinet secretaries are not interrogated on the floor 
of the House or Senate; we have no "appeal to the 
country' * through special elections; we have no non- 
geographical means of electing to our Legislature the 
wisest heads if they have failed of election in one 
constituency; we have no coalition cabinets. 

To a less degree than almost any other country 
have we a population habituated to close study, con- 
scious responsibility, keen interest and intellectual 
conviction on a national scale upon political and dip- 
lomatic subjects. In this unique situation, without the 
patriotic and intelligent criticism which he bespeaks, 
the position in which the President has been placed 
must become intolerable in the appalling responsi- 
bility of an almost autocratic isolation. Honest men 
will find a clear enough war-time rule, which may 
perhaps be put thus : Honest, constructive and patri- 
otic criticism in modo; unmurmuring, unquestioning 
support in re (i. e., prosecuting the war for victory 
over the Teutonic power). 

Acting upon some such rule the nation will give 
no aid nor comfort to the enemy. It will also put all 
its intellectual and moral power, as it has already put 



6 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

its physical and financial power, behind the Govern- 
ment to win the war. Thus will the nation perform 
an almost equally important duty by not withholding 
from its officials the advantage of the thought and 
feeling of the country upon all means to the end of 
victory and upon all the great questions of policy, 
which are incidental to the war and which it will be 
absolutely disastrous to our future to leave to the 
chance of any human being's personal predilection, or 
to drift, or to ephemeral expediency, or to haphazard 
determination through lack of the mandate of public 
opinion. 

The press, the public men and the publicists of 
the United States, in the very fineness of their sturdy 
patriotism, are in danger of erring on the side of 
slighting that more laborious part of their duty — the 
duty of constructive criticism and suggestion. 

Are the vast powers so generously accorded by the 
Congress being translated into swift action by skill- 
fully co-ordinated administrative machinery? Is the 
labor problem being solved ? Is the shipbuilding pro- 
gramme progressing as well as it can possibly be made 
to progress? Is the agricultural programme per- 
fected? Are our relations with the British empire 
being given their proper place as the cornerstone of 
a permanent understanding of the English-speaking 
peoples, which should be the fundamental of our 



THE DUTY OF CRITICISM 7 

future policy, the keystone and the solid nucleus of a 
league in defense of our kind of civilization? 

Such are examples of questions of means and ques- 
tions of policy linked to, but distinct from, the para- 
mount and unquestionable policy of prosecuting the 
war to victory, in which latter the nation is bound to 
unanimity. People outside the Government are gen- 
erally not very accurately informed in the wide field 
of those lesser questions of modes of action and of 
corollary policies. They take a great deal on faith. 
To do so is good. Never had an Executive a freer 
hand in a great task. But faith cannot take the 
place of watchfulness and of constructive criticism 
and suggestion on the part of the nation 's leaders and 
the country's press as a steadying help and an inspira- 
tion to the Government in its trusteeship of the vast 
interests of the nation. The safeguarding of the 
nation's vast interests and the real furtherance of 
the Government's efficiency in the promotion of those 
interests alike demand honest, fearless, patriotic and 
constructive criticism. 



II 



THE USE AND ABUSE OF PARTISANSHIP 

How, then, is public opinion to be brought to bear 
in a way to promote attainment of the aim of the 
war and to help bring the policies and ways and 
means pursued by the Government up to ever higher 
standards of wisdom, foresight and efficiency? How 
is really constructive criticism to gain a hearing and 
to effect anything? Individual citizens can do little. 
Press and periodicals and such organizations as the 
National Security League, the American Defense 
League, the American Rights League, and others, par- 
ticularly if they work together, can do more. But it 
is admittedly difficult for any of these to reach the 
Administration under present conditions. Thus it is 
to the Congress as a forum and to a political party 
as an organ that public opinion must look for means 
to become effectively articulate. And this fact in- 
vites honest, unsentimental consideration of the ques- 
tion of the rights and wrongs of partisanship in this 
perilous time of war. Perhaps there can be found 

8 



USE AND ABUSE OF PARTISANSHIP 9 

here, too, a formula as clear as the one already found 
to divide beneficial from injurious criticism. 

It is easy enough to waive aside all partisanship as 
wrong. A fine patriotic impulse commends so hand- 
some a gesture ; but a dangerous habit of not bother- 
ing about important distinctions, even when they in- 
troduce essential differences, may lead to danger, if 
every meaning of "partisanship" is to be indiscrimi- 
nately banned. It is a sad commentary upon the 
political life of this country that the acquired mean- 
ing of "partisanship" and "party politics" is so 
largely that of adopting opinions, standing for poli- 
cies, and, whether in office or in opposition, striving, 
condemning, attitudinizing and contriving with a view 
to keeping or to gaining power merely for power's 
sake. Good Americans will have no patience in these 
days with such merely selfish partisanship. Without 
virtue in itself, it may in time of peace work some 
incidental good; but in time of grave crisis it should 
be treated with equal contempt whenever found to 
characterize the party in office or the party out of 
office. 

But partisanship has another meaning. It is tak- 
ing sides upon questions of policy. Aside from the 
national war aim, as to which there can be no two 
opinions, the whole field of policies and of ways and 
means is as open to honest patriotic and constructive 
difference of opinion as it is to such criticism. Such 



10 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

opinion, jointly held by those like-minded, becomea 
justified partisanship. Expressed in political action, 
it becomes justified party politics, — something quite 
different in quality and purpose from the selfish 
" partisanship " and "party polities' ' of popular 
phrase, which is so rightly condemned. A safe cri- 
terion would seem to be this: — Attack or opposition 
by reason of partisanship is to be condemned ; attack 
or opposition by compelling reason of patriotic duty, 
based on conscientious conviction, is to be commended. 
If it gains efficiency in being done through an organ- 
ized political party, it should be all the more com- 
mended, even though it may then be called in one 
sense partisan. There is slight danger indeed that a 
single-minded patriotism will not always be circum- 
spect, in the discharge of the duty of criticism by a 
political party, to measure with a due regard to the 
adventitious effects of the action taken the good 
sought to be achieved. 

The efficiency and wisdom of men and of measures 
are the two legitimate subjects for cleavage of po- 
litical opinion. In such countries as France and 
Great Britain, where the machinery of democratic 
government is more resilient and more constantly ac- 
cessible to public opinion, we have seen such cleavages 
arise during the war and work beneficial changes in 
both fields. In our own more rigid system, in which 
executive personnel is fixed for four-year periods and 



USE AND ABUSE OF PARTISANSHIP 11 

is only slightly touched by the Senate's confirming 
power or by the potentialities of possible legislative 
thumb-screws, political action as to personnel is con- 
fined almost entirely to elections to the Congress at 
fixed intervals. 

Thus, in the United States, political party action is 
mostly remitted, between elections, to questions of 
policy. In a country so evenly divided in party mem- 
bership it would be absurd to assume that official 
opinion or the opinion of one political party, could 
alone be of use in contributing wisdom and efficiency 
to the conduct of affairs of unusual difficulty and 
unprecedented importance to the whole nation. By 
collecting, scrutinizing, making articulate and stand- 
ing for whatever is good in the unofficial opinion of 
the country; by organizing constructive criticism and 
suggestion; by broaching policies of foresight, a 
minority party has an opportunity to serve the coun- 
try. To receive consideration, opinion must be or- 
ganized. Hence the great use of party even in war- 
time. It can assure that the whole, not half, of the 
national thought shall be brought to bear upon the 
national problems. It can act as a balance wheel 
that the machinery of government can ill dispense 
with in time of stress. 

Speaking generally, coalition, " opposition/ ' or stul- 
tified uselessness are the only courses open to a party 
not in power. Denied coalition, even in the form of 



12 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

an advisory war council, there remains to a minority 
party, " opposition.' ' Since the war began the role 
technically known as the "opposition" has been acted 
with an entire freedom from evil partisanship that 
has been beyond praise. If there has been error it 
has lain rather in a somewhat too great avail of the 
theory that deprivation of power carries with it free- 
dom from the duty of uniting upon a programme of 
constructive criticism and suggestion. In the Senate, 
especially, a small section of the party in power has 
shown, on occasion, a correspondingly praiseworthy 
disposition to sacrifice slavish " regularity, ' ' just as 
the opposition has always sacrificed malicious parti- 
sanship, when great issues were at stake. 

Partisanship and party action, like criticism, if 
honest, patriotic and constructive and directed to no 
selfish end but solely to the advancement of the na- 
tional interests and the national aim to which nation 
and Government are pledged, will strengthen and 
safeguard the common purpose. In times like these, 
above all, the nation is all; parties of themselves are 
nothing. It is in the great things of statesmanship, 
not in the trivialities of " politics/ ' that the nation is 
concerned; and it is only through the question of 
their utility to the evolution and carrying out of the 
best possible policies that we can be expected to think 
at all of party at this time. A conscientious "oppo- 
sition" without malice or selfishness and a party in 



USE AND ABUSE OF PARTISANSHIP 13 

power which, will not altogether sacrifice conviction to 
" regularity " should make possible alignments able 
to make opposition effective when surely demanded by 
the country's interests, while assuring that hearty 
support all Americans are eager to give the Adminis- 
tration on every occasion when they can conscien- 
tiously do so. The very regrettable failure to create a 
coalition war council still leaves a heavy obligation 
upon a minority party that counts half the popula- 
tion in its membership, and at the same time it in- 
creases the vast responsibility of the party in power. 
Partisanship, except the partisanship of an honest, 
fervid patriotism, is something the country will 
hardly excuse on the part of either. 



Ill 



THE ART OF ADMINISTRATION 

Good administration requires constant and ade- 
quate motive power applied to a good machine to 
make the power effective. The motive power consists 
in clear purpose and strong, decisive will to achieve 
that purpose. But the power must not be like latent 
heat ; it must be harnessed to its machine. Executive 
ability has been spoken of as "the art of passing the 
buck." The seeming slight hints a truth and an 
ability without which good administration is impos- 
sible. There are men of much ability whose idea of 
heaven would be to stand on a hill completely sur- 
rounded by stenographers and themselves to dictate 
every detail of the vastest affairs. Men of that na- 
ture can never be good executives. The passion for 
doing things oneself may be a virtue so long as the 
task is within the power of one human being to per- 
form. When the task has passed beyond that modest 
compass, then the man, however brilliant, who can- 
not pass on his work to others, retaining only so much 

14 



THE ART OF ADMINISTRATION 15 

as is appropriate to the capacity of one man and 
choosing well the part he will retain, is not a good 
executive. Much of the motive power that is his re- 
mains latent. It is not applied to the machine. The 
machine is inevitably, by just so much, paralyzed. 
The product of the machine is, by just so much, 
reduced. 

Executive ability, then, aside from talent, clear 
purpose and intellectual power, is judgment of men 
and faith in them — the choosing of the wisest collab- 
orators and the delegation to them of great responsi- 
bilities. Through them the full motive power will 
reach the administrative machine. Otherwise a great 
part of the power must inevitably be lost because of 
the simple fact that in vast affairs the task of apply- 
ing all the power to the machine is infinitely more 
than any one man can perform. 

At the top of an administrative machine, then, is 
its executive, having as councilors as many trusted 
lieutenants as necessary to keep the whole of the 
motive power of clear purpose, prompt decision and 
quick transmission continuously operative. The 
principal executive can thus confine himself to 
"touching the high places" of policy, to orders, to 
approving in principle, to ratifying or amending 
finished plans presented to him, to the guidance of 
work along broad lines. His councilors distill from 
the mass of questions presented the compact essence 



16 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

of what he must pass upon. His time is saved for 
this highest function and is not frittered away in 
attention to details. 

The body of the administrative machine proper 
consists in a number of administrative entities cor- 
responding to the number of broad subjects into 
which the work is divided. Each should comprise 
the best ability obtainable for handling every phase of 
the subject with which it is charged. At the head 
of each should be a general direction, resembling on 
a small scale the general direction of the whole ma- 
chine already indicated. Each of these machines 
should gather to itself all that there is to be done 
in its field of work. Its functions should be log- 
ically divided below for the efficient performance of 
details and specialized tasks. The finished product of 
its functioning should automatically be united, sifted, 
simplified and co-ordinated in the process of reaching 
and being passed upon by the general direction at the 
top of any given department. 

Within a well-organized department there are 
rules and checks to assure necessary consultation in 
order that there shall be no conflicts or overlappings 
and in order that it shall be impossible for a piece 
of work to go forth unless it shall represent the 
views of all the subdivisions within the department 
which are concerned with its subject matter. In a 
good administrative machine there is similar careful 



THE ART OF ADMINISTRATION 17 

provision for interdepartmental conference in the 
early stages of a project during the course of its 
working out, and finally when it has reached the de- 
partmental head and is ready for final discussion 
between him and the heads of other departments con- 
cerned. 

Government is the most complicated of mundane 
affairs. For a Government it is, therefore, pre-emi- 
nently essential that the laws of good administration 
be observed. They make the difference between effi- 
ciency and chaos. If the foregoing attempt to indi- 
cate the nature of an administrative machine con- 
formable to those general laws has had the least 
success, it will be seen that an executive department 
of government is in structure a miniature of the whole 
executive branch of government. Each department 
has its head, with his lieutenants and councilors. 
Those officials comprise the general direction of the 
department and the court of last resort in infra- 
departmental decisions. Below them is the depart- 
mental machine proper, with all its bureaus, divi- 
sions, offices, etc. Each of these strives to advance 
the work as far as possible toward the finished prod- 
uct. Every one of these, with exceedingly few excep- 
tions, has its divisional organization and may be re- 
garded, in a way, as a microcosm of the department 
or, indeed, of the whole executive branch of govern- 
ment, 



18 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

From this fact it may fairly be concluded that 
the laws of good administration are natural ones, 
hardly more to be trifled with than are the laws of 
the biological cell. Some of their essentials are these : 
Responsibility and authority must be united in 
equal measure. Authority must be distributed until 
all of it can be used, that is, until it is all operative 
and no one man is charged with the use of more than 
it is physically possible for him to use to the best 
advantage. Those among whom the power is dis- 
tributed should be those best able to use it wisely 
and to form the best possible general direction of the 
administrative machinery and the wisest councilors 
of its individual head. All work of one general kind 
should be concentrated in direction and subdivided in 
special aspects. Every agency interested in any phase 
of a subject should be invariably consulted upon that 
subject, and all such agencies should work together 
for the common aim. The machinery should be kept 
as simple as is practicable. 

To use a happy phrase of General Crowder, there 
will also have some day to be instituted in this 
country a great deal of "supervised decentraliza- 
tion. ' ' Instead of piling officialdom sky-high at Wash- 
ington, perhaps the States can be grouped in zones 
for the administration of increasing Federal busi- 
ness. But that is another story. It will be more 
to the point now to examine the present state of 



THE ART OF ADMINISTRATION 19 

affairs at Washington by the standard of these few 
simple principles of businesslike administration. 

In attempting some constructive or at least sug- 
gestive criticism of the machinery and functioning of 
administrative work at Washington there is danger of 
injustice through either overrating or underrating 
defects which seem patent to an observer. This is 
due to the incredible difficulty of gaining up-to-date 
official information as to the organization, function- 
ing or product of the great engine through which 
the nation is trying to execute the tasks of govern- 
ing itself at home and of carrying on its part of the 
greatest war in history. Nine-tenths of the informa- 
tion referred to could not, it would seem, be of the 
slightest value to the enemy. Indeed, results ob- 
tained, if thoroughly satisfactory, would tend rather 
to discouragement than to "comfort to the enemy. " 
It would seem that there must be some way of with- 
holding from the enemy information that would aid 
him which need not involve at the same time depriv- 
ing the American public to so great an extent of the 
facts even as to almost routine matters, to say noth- 
ing of questions of principle involved in important 
policy. It is rather singular that in the United 
States there should be enforced ignorance and lack of 
public discussion or political attention to so many 
matters which are the subject of unrestrained, spir- 
ited and constructive discussion in the countries of 



20 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

our allies. Aside from dangers of inaccuracy due to 
the above considerations, the appalling bulk of our 
augmented governmental machine excludes from any 
comment of reasonable length all but the rough indi- 
cation of a few aspects and examples of the problem. 

The evolution of the departments at Washington 
had been from the first through a rather haphazard 
accretion of new functions to one department or an- 
other, with illogical results, whose defects had long 
been recognized. President Taft had put to work 
some of the country's most experienced efficiency ex- 
perts who were to perfect a budget system and also to 
plan a far-reaching department reorganization which 
would undoubtedly have involved much redistribution 
of functions and perhaps some rearrangement even of 
the names of departments and of some of the broad 
division of subjects which those names should con- 
note. Unfortunately, this work was not continued, 
and the country had to face the war without the 
strengthening of executive machinery which might 
otherwise have preceded the crisis. "With the creation 
of a Shipping Board and a Council of National De- 
fense and some other things, a gesture was at last 
made toward preparedness. 

With the coming of war there were summoned to 
Washington a great number of men. Congress 
gave the President every desired power. The coun- 
try made superb response in unmurmuring acceptance 



THE ART OF ADMINISTRATION 21 

of every innovation and sacrifice and the President 
fronted his stupendous task having at his disposition 
as many as he chose of the country's ablest men, 
willing to sacrifice every selfish interest to patriotic 
service. The spirit shown by Congress and the coun- 
try has been one to hearten and bring pride to Ameri- 
cans, and the President in his appalling responsi- 
bilities has received, as he should, the nonpartisan 
support of all citizens in the work of winning the 
war. 

The question is, Are all these fine potentialities by 
this time being swiftly translated into action of the 
greatest attainable efficiency to win the war? And 
if not, why not? There is nothing to be gained in 
publicly slurring over what are generally admitted in 
private to be glaring defects of our administrative 
machinery and its functioning. The great talents and 
intellectual ability of the President embodying as he 
does the tremendous motive power of a great nation's 
high resolve and endowed by law with unprecedented 
authority are not being liberated as they should be 
for the national advantage. This fact is undoubted 
and is a grave detriment to the country. The ob- 
vious remedy would seem to be the creation of a true 
council of national defense or war council, composed 
not of specialists, but of men of the greatest wisdom, 
judgment and knowledge of affairs that can be found 
in the country, irrespective of political party. 



22 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

Through such a council, with leisure for great ques- 
tions, whom he could trust implicitly and to whom 
he could intrust all but the final touch of approval 
of great projects, and only through such an agency, 
can the President really mobilize and make promptly 
effective for the country's good his own great abil- 
ities and the powers he possesses, which otherwise 
remain slow and halting in their operation, through 
no fault of the President's, but from the simple fact 
that there is an absolute limit to the matters to which 
one human mind can give adequate attention. 

The present Council of National Defense is a coun- 
cil in name only. It is composed of members of the 
Cabinet and of a few advisers in special fields. Espe- 
pecially in the avalanche of extra work due to the 
war, heads of departments and special advisers have 
in their regular duties every ounce of work and re- 
sponsibility that they can bear if they are to perform 
satisfactorily their indispensable functions. Each of 
these officials must very properly concentrate upon 
the great work for which he is responsible. None 
of them as individuals, nor all of them as a body, 
can possibly be transmuted by a name into a war 
council or a real council of national defense. Such 
a council must be in constant touch with the Presi- 
dent and must, like him, survey the whole field with 
a broad view, prepared to compound differences of 
opinion, to outline and pass upon the tasks of special 



THE ART OF ADMINISTRATION 23 

departments, to adopt or reject recommendations and 
to energize the whole of the war and governmental 
machinery. With such a council we should hear less 
of the needs of priority boards, of the dreadful lack 
of co-ordination and co-operation, of duplication of 
effort, of interminable delays. 

The original Council of National Defense did 
good service and deserves the thanks of the coun- 
try for its work in the directions of mobilizing indus- 
try, stimulating labor and systematizing the Govern- 
ment's purchase of supplies with a view to economy 
and quick delivery, and also in stimulating and cen- 
tralizing almost innumerable bodies of medical, scien- 
tific and other workers called upon to contribute to 
our war efficiency. In industrial and commercial mat- 
ters, due doubtless to a law excluding interested par- 
ties from participation in contracts on behalf of the 
Government, much of the organization working with 
the Council was later inverted, so to speak. From 
being governmental agencies many units of personnel 
became formally the agents of the industries or trades. 
This interesting adjustment seems simply to call for 
the creation of official points of contact to meet the 
former governmental units now metamorphosed into 
private ones. And this was presumably done. 

Out of all the ruck of administrative improvisation 
there now emerge the following units which appear 
to be autonomous, that is to say, responsible to the 



24 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

President and reporting to him : The war trade board 
council, the food administrator, the fuel administra- 
tor, the committee on public information, the aircraft 
board, the shipping board with its fleet corporation, 
and perhaps the censorship board. Through further 
evolution of this same kind, many of the remaining 
functions of the present Council of National Defense 
will naturally be consolidated in individual organiza- 
tion, some to be quasi-autonomous, but many to gravi- 
tate to and be absorbed into the organization of exist- 
ing departments or other agencies.* 

Much of the new administrative machinery remains 
in a state of flux. Many of the old departments are 
somewhat emersed in civil service tradition and loath 
to abandon the habitual cares of peace time for the 
drastic revolutionary action demanded by the entirely 
new efficiency, comprehensive decision and swift ac- 
tion indispensable to success in war. In some of the 
departments there are existing bureaus or divisions 



* Such is the trend of recent administrative evolution. 
There have since been some other more or less spasmodic 
changes and partial adjustments. Much was heard of a 
departmental council within the War Department. The ad- 
ministrative machinery affecting labor has been through at 
least two rearrangements, — whether in the direction of com- 
plication or of real co-ordination it is not yet easy to be quite 
sure. The appointment of Mr. Schwab has strengthened the 
shipping board. Much is expected of Mr. Stettinius and of 
General Goethals in speeding and systematizing ordnance and 
other supplies. Whether the air-craft situation is due to bad 
organization or to inefficient personnel will doubtless be re- 
vealed. Even the best organization is of course nearly use- 
less unless ably manned and well and promptly directed. 



THE ART OF ADMINISTRATION 25 

charged with the same subject matter that has been 
made the field of new agencies, and in such cases it is 
hard to detect signs of co-operation between the two. 
If these be wanting, of course, the ridiculous waste 
of energy is obvious. While no one wishes for a mo- 
ment to belittle the praiseworthy work being done at 
Washington, it is a matter of common knowledge that 
our old friends, co-operation, co-ordination, common 
counsel, foresight, unification of effort and avoidance 
of duplication, are, like our old friend "pitiless pub- 
licity/' more or less lost for the time in the roar and 
dust of the governmental machine as it goes through 
the throes of evolution toward efficiency. 

Food, labor, ships and money are among the clear- 
est of our necessities. Production, transportation, 
distribution, consumption and such questions are part 
of the great food policy. Are the Department of 
Agriculture, with its myriad agents, and the food 
administration working together as one great engine 
upon the food question in all its aspects? Are all 
the officials of the Department of Labor and Mr. 
Gompers's committee working in energetic accord 
upon their most vital problem ? And is every military 
or other executive department concerned with some 
aspect of labor in close consultation with them upon 
its particular interest in the subject? 

For example, have the Secretary of Agriculture, 
the Secretary of Labor and the food administrator 



26 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

perfected a plan sure to supply sufficient labor for 
increased food production? Has the Shipping Board 
at last arrived at maximum efficiency? Is the 
Treasury Department co-ordinating the network and 
infinite ramifications of our official and private or- 
ganizations to teach economy and bond buying to 
the American people? These are merely a few sam- 
ples of questions that the American people would 
be glad to be assured can be answered satisfac- 
torily. 

If one watched a man eat something and grow sick, 
and then change his diet and get on much better, 
and if one imitated both his folly and its cure, then 
one could not claim much credit for sagacity in profit- 
ing by another's example. The American people are 
not called upon to display patience if their Govern- 
ment is seen content to make experimental errors 
when it has before its eyes the experiences of its 
Allies, showing clearly enough where are short cuts 
to efficiency without floundering through the bog of 
experimentation. With all due allowance for the 
colossal dimensions of the task, nevertheless remem- 
bering that America has been very many months 
at war and that the Administration had years of 
warning, it is reasonable to expect reforms at Wash- 
ington that shall liberate the executive power so as 
to make it much more promptly effective and upon 
machinery much better co-ordinated, and shall so 



THE ART OF ADMINISTRATION 27 

secure quicker, surer and still more satisfactory 
results. 

A real war council, continuously sitting, continu- 
ously deciding and authorizing in the name of the 
President, can alone meet the necessity of lengthen- 
ing the executive arm to a point at which it can touch, 
regulate and keep in motion the vast machinery of 
the Government. To supply the President with able 
counselors, to be chosen by him and confirmed by the 
Senate, whose duty it shall be to think, to plan, to 
decide, to recommend — but never to act except by 
the President's authority — is no more to interfere 
with executive prerogative than it would be if Con- 
gress should appropriate salaries to give the Presi- 
dent additional private secretaries. Such a real war 
council as has long been urged should quadruple the 
means of wisely transmitting the executive power to 
the administrative machine. "Without such liberation 
of the force of the nation now vested in the President, 
how could even the be3t co-ordinated machinery of 
Government function safely and surely, and at high 
speed? 

To use a homely figure, the presidential office is a 
reservoir of executive power, great in time of peace 
and now immensely greater through new laws passed 
by Congress. The conduit pipe to transmit this power 
to the administrative machine must be made larger 
if that power is to be transmitted promptly and 



28 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

with the deliberation indispensable to wise counsel. 
The appointment of men of first ability to be trusted 
lieutenants and counselors of the President merely 
multiplies the President's ability effectively to exer- 
cise executive powers too vast to be passed on to the 
machine by one unaided mind, however great it might 
be. Such a war council, and especially if it were 
made at least morally ancillary to a small bipartisan 
joint committee of Congress to confer and consult 
with it on problems relating to the war, would lib- 
erate energy now bottled up, would co-ordinate the 
legislative and executive branches of government and 
would make the President's great powers and abil- 
ities many fold more efficiently available to the 
nation, which is so nobly dedicated to the triumph of 
right in this great war. 



IV 



THE PERIL OF HIEALUTIN 

Hifalutinism, defined as pompous speech or writ- 
ing " usually addressed to educated or half-educated 
audiences, who are supposed to appreciate bombast,' ' 
has always been a curse to American politics. "We 
are all familiar with it. To bolster one economic 
doctrine, we had "the free breakfast table' ' cry and 
the removal of customs tariff dues from tea and 
coffee, the result being to rob the national treasury 
of great revenues without holding down the prices of 
those useful commodities. To bolster another eco- 
nomic doctrine we had "the full dinner pail," — 
which, however, did make good its promise. In the 
realm of emotionalism, we had the "bloody shirt" 
and many other cries. In the field of class prejudice 
we have had an overdose of cries of "Wall-Street," 
"special privilege," "the interests," etc. In 1912, 
and after, a bankruptcy of ideas and a prevailing lack 
of sincere issues laid the political party seeking to 
gain power (and then to entrench itself) so peculiarly 

29 



30 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

open to temptations to hifalutinism that it is not 
wholly surprising that it yielded to them pretty com- 
pletely. The ghost of "the interests' ' was made to 
walk again. In China a " dollar' ' diplomacy (which 
was simply wise and practical diplomacy) was de- 
nounced. Afterwards it was sought to revive it when 
too late. In the Caribbean " dollar" diplomacy was 
carried on and even exaggerated under another name. 
Similar has been the policy towards combinations in 
industry and trade, to mention but a few examples. 
The expediency of a campaign naturally enough be- 
came the expediency of an administration, with which 
some of the tendency to hifalutinism remained . 

With the gradual sophistication of the public 
in economic matters, the field of hifalutinism 
rather shifts to social ideas and to international rela- 
tions, two relatively unknown subjects. As the mind 
becomes, through knowledge and critical thought, less 
accessible to hifalutin, the spirit remains the same. 
The ideal, rather than the real, becomes the surer 
basis for that particular appeal which always remains 
when facts for the intellect are lacking. The begin- 
ning of the war in 1914 brought international rela- 
tions and unique opportunity for idealization in a 
conjunction sure to make the public mind unusually 
vulnerable to hifalutin. The war's churning up of 
social problems has inevitably broadened the scope of 
that vulnerability. A brief glance at this past his- 



THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 31 

tory is useful just now only, perhaps, for the reason 
that understanding of the past is the sole known mode 
of appraising the present and of envisaging and en- 
deavoring to prepare against the future. There could, 
however, be no weightier reason for a glance back- 
ward at this time. Only by clearly seeing past error 
can we hope to prevent fresh error of the same kind. 
Although ''simplicity is not commonplace and no- 
bility is not hifalutin, ,, we need not altogether con- 
demn hifalutin. Esthetically it is good or bad ac- 
cording to whether one likes grand words or not, just 
as one may like Wagner or Victor Herbert. As a 
matter of efficiency, the question is whether hifalutin 
helps or hinders wise decision by the application of 
reason to facts. Subjectively, it is innocent or crim- 
inal according to its sincerity. Objectively it is of 
good or bad effect according to the soundness or the 
unsoundness of the doctrine it seeks to promote. 
Still less shall we condemn idealism. So long as 
idealism is attended by strict science, it is the guid- 
ing star of human progress. In pursuing the ideal 
through practical means politics is at its best. That 
is very different from the idealism that confuses 
thought with reality. The wish is father to the 
thought ; but we shall hardly admit that the thought is 
father to the fact. Aside from its clap-trap forms, 
hifaultinism, in transcending the limits of facts and 
experience, readily makes itself a bridge over to 



32 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

idealism ; so that, for practical purposes, the two may- 
be judged by the one set of standards. To reach over 
facts and appeal to ideals is the mode of the saint, 
the statesman, and the politician ; of the true prophet 
and of the charlatan. 

Even ideals are counters in the game of political 
expediency or opportunism. They are very explosive 
and dangerous ones and should be used with the ut- 
most care and circumspection. Facts are far safer. 
Ideals are jealous of facts and the pursued ideal has 
a nasty way of turning upon its pursuer and fasci- 
nating him into blindness to facts. Hence the tragic 
casuistries to which all men are liable, which a Rus- 
sian novelist so horribly depicts, and which Russia 
to-day so sadly illustrates. To make doctrines, or to 
make facts, the weapons of political expediency are 
two very different things. The distinction cannot be 
too thoroughly insisted upon, because the sincerest 
idealists are so painfully prone to confuse doctrine 
with principle. For example, some of them seem to 
think that by a world treaty they could abolish the 
balance of power, which, of course, they can no more 
do than they could abolish gravitation by a law 
against the grocer's scales, — simply because the bal- 
ance of power, like gravitation, is a principle, not a 
doctrine. Another danger of idealism is its strong 
tendency to obscess its victims, and make them callous 
to all considerations except those favorable to the 



THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 33 

ignis fatuus upon which their eyes are fixed. Hence it 
is that doctrinaire is a word of bad repute and that 
1 ' reformer " is not a certificate of honor. It is as if 
the gods begrudged too high excellence and sent the 
corruption of casuistry to humble high aims! 

It was hifalutin, it was the wrong kind of idealism, 
which, whether due to political expediency or to a 
mistaken statecraft, kept the United States out of the 
war from the date of the Lusitania until April 6, 
1917. The same evils brought failure to sense and 
act upon the fact of the war in August, 1914, and 
brought failure then and there to prepare for war. 
The same evils left Mexico a festering tragedy. For a 
good while official utterance frequently reeked with 
the quality of those evils, often dangerously, some- 
times beneficially, — as in the fine rally of the Entente 
Allies in the name of free institutions, and, up to a 
certain point, in a moral offensive as a subsidiary part 
of major strategy. By all means we want a moral, an 
intellectual and an economic offensive in conjunction 
with a military and naval one. As Cheradame points 
out, geography, ethnology, economics and national 
psychology enter intimately into true strategy. But 
to neglect practical propaganda and the economic 
weapon and to rely too much upon ideal "slogans" 
were a very dangerous mistake. The attitude of the 
peace societies towards preparedness for years before 
the war, and the credulous faith of our peace-ideal- 



34 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

ists in the magic of treaties and arbitration is a per- 
fect example of dangerous idealism. So is that class 
of opposition to universal service. Let us hereafter 
always remember the lesson to beware of dangerous 
idealism, wherever found. 

Much as hifalutinism merges into idealism so does 
idealism merge into and get exploited by wild rad- 
icalism, — that is, the radicalism that hotly pursues un- 
sound and impracticable aims by the route of un- 
sound and dangerous doctrine and that, in the whole 
process, ignores facts, natural law, human nature, 
history, and experience. We have seen it at work in 
the fetich of the direct primary (now so fast being 
discredited) ; in the wholesale referendum ; in the 
absurd proposals for the recall of judges and judicial 
decisions, and in various other unsound cure-alls. 
Very dangerous is the lazy optimism that believes 
there are short cuts to the millennium and that man 
can devise progress by fiat, in defiance of the laws 
of his nature. A classic example of hifalutin and 
wild radicalism was Bryan's silver campaign. In- 
deed, every highly specialized aim is the prey of the 
tendencies of hifalutinism, unsound idealism, and wild 
radicalism. We have observed the interplay be- 
tween the three phenomena. We can see that a simi- 
larity in essence, working and effect enables us to 
group them together and to subject them to one set 
of tests, which really is the careful test of honest 



THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 35 

common sense applied to actual facts. In its cease- 
less use of fact, doctrine and ideal, political expedi- 
ency will be dangerous if even in pursuit of the right 
aim its casuistry sets in motion too great a lot of 
incidental evil. Or, through sophistry, it may set 
aside the right aim and be directed to subordinate or 
unsound aims. And either of these things may hap- 
pen either in well-meaning statecraft or in vicious 
and selfish politics, — in virtuous foolish idealism or in 
conscious self-seeking. Our history has often shown 
us casuistry of means and sophistry of aims both of- 
ficial and unofficial. 

Such, then, is the gist of hifalutinism, unsound 
idealism, and wild radicalism: of political unsound- 
ness generally. Ultra-conservatism is less interesting 
but quite as fatal. Aside from a minority of the 
hopelessly selfish as small as the minority of the 
wildly radical, the ultra-conservatism of the American 
people consists mainly in easj^-going uninformed in- 
difference. It is relatively easy to combat, because it is 
generally easier to convert an ultra-conservative to 
reasonable radicalism than to reconcile a wild radical 
to reasonable progress. The fanatic is articulate : the 
sensible citizen is less so, but he has the advantage 
of overwhelming numbers. The time has come for 
him to use that advantage. Whether in war or in 
peace the fate of the country depends upon just this 
majority. To combat the evils here discussed, that 



36 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

majority of average citizens must go into the arena 
of public questions, each armed with the divining-rod 
of common-sense and information, and must cry down 
those who are unsound and awaken those who are 
politically moribund. Only so shall we keep our 
great country on the true path to its high destiny. 
We must do so to win the war. We must do so for 
the wise solution of the problems of peace. 



ULTRA-RADICALISM AND THE WAR 

Because the war is the only thing that seems real or 
worth thinking about at this time, because the elimi- 
nation of the Prussian menace is the sine qua non of 
all our hopes, and also because the war brings into 
bold relief so many other things, it will be valuable 
and perhaps interesting to try a little to examine and 
classify the ultra-radicals and idealists of this coun- 
try by looking at some of their reactions to the war. 

First of all, they, with the administrations of those 
days, must bear the burden of responsibility, shared 
in part by a self-centered and indifferent public, for 
the facts of our obstinate neglect of preparedness and 
of our belated entry into the war. Their punishment 
is the fact that but for their visions of Utopia and 
their headstrong refusal of the vision of facts, the 
war might have been successfully ended before now. 
The honest pacifists show signs of having learned their 
lesson. Will the lesson stay learned or will they re- 
lapse to Utopianism at the first opportunity? For 

37 



38 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

one reason or another pacifist idealism permeates all 
classes of our ultra-radicals and professional idealists. 
So long as they oppose a system of universal military 
training demanded alike for national safety and for 
national well-being ; so long as they wish to pin their 
faith entirely to a universal league of nations, they 
will require careful watching if America is to be safe. 
We have lately seen what treaties are worth. We 
know that even in countries upon which history, tra- 
dition, and blood have bestowed the highest homo- 
geneity, revolution and civil war have sometimes 
occurred. Some of these civil wars of history we now 
justify as necessary steps in national and world prog- 
ress. Yet in a world union composed of nations of 
every language, every habit of thought, and every 
tradition and degree and quality of civilization, of 
the most varying interests, we are asked to expect the 
general progress to be blissfully free of such disturb- 
ances ! A league of nations may be feasible ; but to be 
safe for America, it must rest upon a balance of power 
within it clearly on the side of ourselves and our 
English-speaking and other like-minded allies. To be 
safe, the doctrine of a league of nations must pay 
homage to the laws of nature and to the nature of 
man by taking as its keystone the principle of the 
balance of power, at which some visionaries are so 
fond of scoffing. 
Among the ultra-radicals who enjoy the privileges 



ULTRA-RADICALISM AND THE WAR 39 

of this free country, there is, perhaps, most excuse 
to be found — not, of course, for such insincere or 
wrong-headed leaders as may exploit them, — but for 
some few among the rank and file of the I. W. W. 
who have suffered much and have suffered through 
our Government's neglect of proper measures of pa- 
ternalistic protection for the less fortunate of our 
citizens. There is also an explanation, although not 
an excuse, for the vagaries of our foreign-born recal- 
citrants, who ungratefully apply to a land that has 
too carelessly welcomed them their retrospective bit- 
terness against institutions that formerly oppressed 
them. One can understand all too easily the pro- 
German and professional socialist group. Immensely 
significant is the fact that so soon as they at last saw 
that their beloved Bolsheviki had brought Russia to a 
point where the Bolshevik doctrines were likely to be 
extinguished beneath the Prussian heel, all these 
groups (except the definitely pro-German and the 
plain malice-aforethought anarchists of the I. W. W. 
type) turned suddenly from indifference or worse to 
America 's war and became keen for the battle against 
Prussianism. Is this because of any sudden love 
of America? Not at all. Many such, like the Russian 
Bolsheviki, are Marxian international socialists, whose 
sole aim is to promote a universal proletarian revo- 
lution. To the Russian Bolsheviki the honor and 
salvation of Russia are relatively nothing. For 



40 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

the moment they have achieved in Russia the 
absolutism of an autocracy of a minority of the 
"proletariat" That is what they wish to see in all 
countries. Beside this, their heart 's desire, democracy 
is nothing to them; constitutions, laws and treaties 
are nothing to them. Their every act is determined 
by their one aim, — a universal proletarian revolution, 
— and must be judged in the light of this fact, or else 
it will be misjudged. They and their fellow-thinkers 
have hardly a good word for the splendid institutions 
of American democracy and for its great promise of 
a still finer future. In their ignorance and their 
egoism, or in slavery to their theories, they fail to 
understand that in America there is no "proletariat" ; 
that there are no fixed "classes"; that here we are 
trying, and with very promising success, to combine 
liberty and protection in a proportion to equalize 
opportunity and increase happiness and general wel- 
fare. 

Some few, too, of our little groups of "intellectuals" 
of the ultra-radical stripe might almost have been born 
in Russia, to judge from much of what they some- 
times write. There are sporadic, self-constituted 
spokesmen of "liberal men everywhere" who in the 
vague name of "liberalism" promote the most curi- 
ous doctrines and propaganda that one can see sprout- 
ing on the long-suffering soil of America. Such 
idealists do not seem over much interested in our de- 



ULTRA-RADICALISM AND THE WAR 41 

mocracy as it is. They seem willing to fight for the 
millennium to the bitter end. For them it is Utopia 
or nothing. To them the war is for a "new social 
order"; for a documented league of nations resting 
unusually firmly upon an unusual number of "scraps 
of paper"! They idealize and applaud the Bolshevik 
autocracy while condemning the Prussian one; and 
they have the effrontery to do so in the name of de- 
mocracy! They are very strong on internationalism 
as superior to nationalism, and, indeed, some of their 
writings at times invite the definite question whether 
they themselves are not Marxian socialists at heart. 
Altogether, "liberal men everywhere" would be 
rather astonished to hear some of the pontifical words 
of such spokesmen. 

During two years and eight months a confusion of 
counsel, with blowings hot and blowings cold, had 
left the American people, prior to entering the war, 
somewhat muddled in their thoughts and somewhat 
numbed in their feelings. Given fresh German out- 
rages and a three-line declaration of war by the Con- 
gress of the United States, they showed by their mag- 
nificent response how easily they could have been led 
on an earlier occasion. But the difficulty of the aver- 
age person to realize danger, however menacing, until 
it is in plain sight, together with our distance from 
the theatre of war, undoubtedly justified some of the 
appeals made to various ideals as cries to arms. More 



42 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

recently, the exigencies of Allied morale and solidar- 
ity explain to some extent the continuance of such 
appeals. If they appear sometimes excessive and 
transcendental, one has confidence that they are to a 
certain extent justified by expediency as part of the 
prosecution of the war. But amid all the slogans 
and expressions and reiterations of war aims, it is 
well to remember this. The Congress, which alone 
has the power to do so, declared war to vindicate our 
rights assailed by Germany, which was soon seen to 
mean that our war aim was once and for all to remove 
the menace of Prussian dominion and so to safeguard 
the American Republic. 



VI 



"AMERICAN BOLSHEVIKI 



The simple formula — to remove the menace of 
Prussian dominion and to safeguard the American 
Republic, — with the substitution in each of the Allied 
countries of the name of that country, is clear, unani- 
mous and sufficient. The British formula of "Resti- 
tution, reparation and guarantees" is succinct, satis- 
factory and the same in intent. Lloyd George 's more 
recent elaboration, so closely followed by the Presi- 
dent, was doubtless actuated by the desire of an hon- 
est diplomacy to put before the German people and 
the world a workable idea of the sort of thing which 
would constitute a guarantee in fact of the removal 
of the Prussian menace. But elaborate statements 
for diplomatic purposes should not be allowed to 
vitiate the extreme simplicity of the subjective war 
aim of America and her Allies and thereby to confuse 
the public mind. Unfortunately, excessive elabora- 
tion has tended a little to do just this ; and, so far as 
the public is aware, no great compensatory diplomatic 

43 



44. THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

advantage has thus far resulted. Indeed, interpreta- 
tions by ultra idealists and, on occasion, even our 
diplomacy have in this respect sometimes rather called 
for the warning of de la Eochefoucauld that "the 
subtlest folly grows out of the subtlest wisdom." 

Suppose that a man's wife and mother were at- 
tacked and insulted and that he summoned his friends 
to protect them, to vindicate their honor, and to sup- 
press their assailant. And then suppose that he 
stopped to explain at great length that he did this 
because he had a peculiar interest in the position of 
woman throughout the world. Suppose he said that 
the haremlic system of Turkey, for example, must be 
reformed; that the marriage system among the Hot- 
tentots was faulty, etc., etc. Would not his friends be 
rather bewildered to learn that they were in the fight 
for all those far-away reasons ? There is such a thing 
as hitching one's wagon to too many stars. Besides 
the possibility of confusing the public mind, another 
objection to excessively complex idealization of a per- 
fectly simple war aim is that it facilitates the "bark- 
ers" for every side-show. It plays into the hands of 
all those in this country who, consciously or not, are, 
like the Russian Bolsheviki, interested in the wai 
largely for ulterior purposes. An idealistic adminis-. 
tration can hardly escape being the rallying point 
and "easy mark" for all those with dangerously ideal- 



"AMERICAN BOLSHEVIKI" 45 

istic axes to grind; and, justly or unjustly, it will be 
judged, in the long run, by all of its friends. 

A little school of thought steeped in hifalutinism, 
unsound idealism and ultra-radicalism seems to have 
come to center in a tendency to a certain kind of 
1 ' intellectualism ' ' that is always red-hot for some kind 
of undefined " liberalism' ' and whose tone leads one 
at times almost to doubt whether the ideals of the 
Russian Bolsheviki may not be really rather more 
sympathetic to it than are the actualities of American 
democracy. The internationalism of this school is 
fervent ; its ardor for actual American democracy, and 
for the simple Avar aim of crushing Prussianism to 
make this American democracy safe, has appeared at 
times about as luke-warm as if the beautiful phrases 
of some of its protagonists were flowing in a country 
neutral in the war. It seems that for some of these 
America's real war aim is too crudely simple to fill 
the mind or satisfy the soul. It is well to bear in mind 
the fact that persons more or less touched with these 
ideas have even found official or unofficial place in the 
Administration ; and that in the press and magazines 
a quite considerable number of members of the glit- 
tering school of thought referred to appear to be 
carrying on a systematic propaganda for their too 
transcendent views. 

Of this school of thought are those who flatter the 
Bolshekivi of Russia in the name of democracy. Is it 



46 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

a democracy that declares war on the majority of its 
brother Russians? If this school believe in democ- 
racy, why do they not rather call upon the Bolsheviki 
to reorganize their control of Russia upon democratic 
instead of proletarian autocratic lines ? Are they, too, 
international Marxian socialists? For any other ex- 
planation there is the difficulty of ascribing to such 
egregious cleverness the stupidity or blindness need- 
ful to vindicate sincerity. 

We need not here discuss the question why the 
President has not preached democracy to the Bol- 
shevik autocracy as well as to the Prussian one : why 
he has not conditioned upon their democratization any 
unselfish assistance we may give, as we should like to 
give, the Russian nation. Our Government has the re- 
sponsibility for winning the war and for conducting 
our diplomacy to that end, and it must have the means 
to know what attitude towards the Bolsheviki best sub- 
serves its joint trusteeship of Allied interests, which 
happen to be the paramount interests of democracy in 
the world. Conceivably there are reasons why a guar- 
antee of Russian democracy cannot be at once pro- 
posed to the Bolsheviki in return for their own 
discarding of proletarian autocracy in favor of na- 
tional union. If so, that reason is certainly not to be 
found in the beauty of Bolshevik political and social 
fallacies. There may be no harm in a bit of flattery as 
a government's diplomatic move, but this other 



"AMERICAN BOLSHEVIKI" 47 

unofficial calling of black white in solemn, sten- 
torian tones is certainly most unwholesome for the 
public mind. When recently the President wisely ad- 
dressed a message of good-will to the whole Russian 
people, through the Congress of Soviets at Moscow as 
the only available channel of communication, certain 
followers of the school of diseased liberalism had the 
effrontery, the blindness or the insincerity to try to 
palm off that wise act as intended exclusively and spe- 
cifically for comfort and approval or even actual 
recognition of the Bolshevik regime! A little more 
fact and a great deal less idealistic fiction would 
promote democracy in Russia, and in the world. One 
may favor international Marxian socialism or one may 
favor democracy, and, in particular, American de- 
mocracy; and it sometimes appears to be about time 
to ask a few of our radicals on which side of this 
question they stand. 

In the mad pursuit of vague Utopias, our intel- 
lectual radicals are fascinated by the phrase "self 
determination of peoples.' ' With a fine flexibility of 
mind they are able thus to emphasize a principle of 
nationalism while in the same breath lauding what 
tends to destroy nationalism and substitute interna- 
tionalism. They wish to place our destiny at the 
mercy of a league of nations too sublime to need the 
support of a balance of power. This means, if it 
means anything, a deep faith that nations may be 



48 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

trusted always to act unselfishly, justly and honor- 
ably. Yet when the question arises whether Japan 
shall make an expedition into Siberia, even with the 
mandate of her Allies, it is these very idealists who 
belie their confession of faith by being the first and 
loudest to shriek distrust of a nation which would 
form part of the league they hope for. Do they see 
no ironic humor in this? 

Whenever crude truth is put forth to threaten any 
of the Utopian side-shows which seem so to obscure 
the war aims of the American Bolsheviki, they do not 
hesitate to exaggerate and exploit any real or fancied 
divergence of the Entente Ally war policy. Their 
fanatical preoccupation with ulterior and idealistic 
aims apparently somewhat blinds them at times to the 
real and sufficient war aim and to the essentially 
vicious and very dangerous character of anything 
tending away from that allied solidarity, which is no 
less real because of the curious official use of the term 
* * co-belligerent. ' ' 

Some years ago a young American socialist came 
to grief when, in the course of a delightful book, he 
trotted out his avowed doctrine, which seemed to 
amount to the thesis that if there were gathered to- 
gether a sufficient number of men, sufficiently poor 
and uneducated, there would emanate from the mass 
supreme virtue and supreme wisdom. Crowd psy- 
chology holds no such promise, nor does national psy- 



"AMERICAN BOLSHEVIKI" 49 

chology, whatever our Bolsheviki may think in their 
seeming adherence to the above proposition. Cant in 
the name of "liberalism" is often tinged with the 
shop-worn cry that the present is a capitalists' war. 
It delights in the assumption that its own kind of 
democracy would make wars impossible. Now, the 
principal belligerents in this war are democra- 
cies, excepting only the Teutonic powers, and 
Russia, first under the Czar, and now under the 
Bolsheviki. In a democracy, to carry on war requires 
the support of the people. In the theoretical case 
of an unrighteous war on the part of a democracy, 
these " liberals' ' would doubtless ascribe to capital- 
ists all the selfishness and violence which such a war 
might connote. Upon what principle? Unavoidably 
upon the theory that selfishness and violence abound 
disproportionately among those who have some prop- 
erty. Do the criminal statistics of the country show 
this? Certainly not. Except in the case of autoc- 
racies, all this talk of war for the ex-parte interests 
of capital is sheer nonsense. Democracies carry on 
war for the interests of the whole nation. America 
and her Allies are doing so now. If the best democ- 
racies of to-day could not be trusted to avoid wars 
that were wrong or that were in the interest of classes, 
then the principle of democracy, in the present state 
of civilization, would be proved pro tanto a failure. 
In such case the failure would be that of the mass 



50 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

of citizens and would hardly be curable by perver- 
sion of the principle of democracy to Bolshevikism 
at home or by its extension abroad to internationalism 
and artificial universal leagues. 

America 's intellectual radicalism may be the nucleus 
of a potentially valuable asset in the political intelli- 
gence of the country. It is therefore desirable that it 
be converted to a salutary degree of realism; that it 
be induced to apply its sceptical criticism to its own 
ideals no less than to the actual conditions of the day. 
Meanwhile, we should take care to examine with cold 
scrutiny and with cautious reserve the often alluring 
appeal of those ideas. Naturally, along with a little 
of everything, we have some radicalism that is 
" yellow,' ' that arises out of cynicism, vindictiveness, 
envy, or insincerity. And we have, no doubt, some 
conservatism touched with the same hue. For the 
rest, the very sincerity of an idealism carries with it, 
like so many other good things, its dangers. The 
exuberant optimism of youth or the exhilaration of 
intellectuality, the credulity of ignorance, or even the 
generosity of the heart, may expose to those dangers if 
we are not careful to keep immune by means of fre- 
quent and copious innoculation with common sense 
and reality. 



VII 



ULTRA-IDEALISM AND DIPLOMACY 

Sentimentality, unreality and foolish idealism per- 
meate the hifalutin school of thought very conspicu- 
ously whenever it addresses itself to diplomacy. The 
subject matter of diplomacy is international life. 
Much as the subject matter of individual life is per- 
sonal relations, so the subject matter of international 
life is international relations. International law no 
more absorbs diplomacy than municipal law com- 
prises our every-day life. Backward nations have no 
magic claim upon international society because they 
are small, any more than the troublesome citizen has a 
claim for indulgence if he happens to be of small sta- 
ture. The howl about "secret diplomacy" is also 
largely "bunkum" where democracies are concerned. 
Their task is to have clear and enlightened policies of 
intelligent self-interest honestly carried out. A dis- 
creet secrecy in a specific matter of fixed national 
policy will often be as innocent and as necessary to 
success as the privacy of any individual contract. It 

51 



52 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

is wrong to cheat at cards, but it is idiotic to show 
your hand. As a by-product of the war we all hope 
for a better world and for a better America ; but we 
shall not have a perfect world, nor one independent 
of the nature of man. Both in the conduct of the 
war, in the building of an ultimate peace, and in the 
improvement of national life in the United States, we 
must be on the alert to resist the evils of hifalutinism 
and ultra-radicalism. 

"Imperialism" is another of the big words to which 
some of our "liberal men everywhere" give new mean- 
ings and then rant against with careless disregard of 
their own implications, which are often either insidi- 
ous or silly. The Russian Bolsheviki, in the ardor of 
their single purpose of class war, have sought to place 
the generous freedom of the British Empire and the 
uplifting expansion of American influence in the 
same class with Teutonic enslavement of foreign 
peoples. Now about the only difference between a 
"free" country enjoying complete "self determina- 
tion" and a land within the British Empire is this: — 
If a state is outside the British Empire, then the 
Government at London may make to it strong coercive 
representations upon some question. If a well-devel- 
oped people is within the British Empire, and thus 
ostensibly lacks absolutely independent sovereignty, 
then London is not so likely to interfere with it ! The 
British Empire is a natural growth. Everywhere it 



ULTRA-IDEALISM AND DIPLOMACY 53 

has raised up and improved the life of backward 
peoples. Everywhere it has established justice, truth, 
and fair-play and has led the way to higher civiliza- 
tion. Just so with American " imperialism.' ' Com- 
pare the life of the common people of California, 
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona with that of the Mexican 
peon, exploited, ignorant, weltering in misery and 
turmoil. Were those annexations compatible, or 
were they not, with natural laws working for human 
progress ? The question answers itself. Every exten- 
sion of American influence, of American protection, 
guidance or control in the zone of the Caribbean is 
undeniably fruitful in bringing peace, prosperity, bet- 
ter government, and a freer, better life to the people 
affected. Every expansion of the Prussian power has 
been by intrigue, lies, bad faith and brute force ; and 
in every case it has been by conquest and dominion, 
not over inferior peoples to their undoubted benefit, 
but over people equal or superior to those who have 
asserted dominion over them. In every case it has 
been sought to reduce them to the level of Prussian 
morality. Anglo-Saxon imperialism stops when it 
cannot make out a case before the court of civilization. 
Prussian imperialism stops at nothing. 

When the Russian Bolsheviki seek to confuse the 
issue of the war by the blatant injustice of crying a 
"tu quoque" of * 'imperialism' ' at Britain and 
America, one can fancy that perhaps they laugh in 



54 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

their sleeves at the slaughter of all the nations whose 
governments they hate ; that they wish to see dissen- 
sion and breakdown, in order that class war (their 
ideal) may subvene and that true democracy, which 
is foreign to their aims, may perish. This would be 
intelligible, at least. But how ascribe both good sense 
and good faith to representatives A our own "intel- . 
lectuals" when they lend aid and comfort to this hos- 
tile cry; when by dark innuendo they accuse their 
own country and its racial, spiritual and actual ally 
of "imperialism"? Is this due to their usual failure 
to distinguish between a doctrine and a principle? 
World evolution, like the law, knows a "tortuous 
taking" when it sees one. World evolution, through 
the expansion and survival of the worthiest peoples 
of each epoch, is, like the balance of power, a prin- 
ciple, not a doctrine. However subtle, our dialectic 
principles survive and it is childish to try to talk 
them away, in however beautiful language. 

A brilliant writer lately very skilfully confused 
American policy with Prussian imperialism. His ar- 
gument at least conveyed the impression that there 
was no difference in principle between, let us say, a 
measure of American suzereignty at Panama and 
Prussian dominion by force over Roumania or Alsace- 
Lorraine. He also emphasized, at the expense of our 
Monroe policy, the internationalism ( !) developed in 
certain European concerts about the Balkans and Tur- 



ULTRA-IDEALISM AND DIPLOMACY 55 

key. It suited his purpose to ignore the fact that the 
selfish aims of each nation were the motives of action 
in all that Congress of Berlin style of international- 
ism. And so they will be in great measure in any in- 
ternationalism in sight even to-day! The writer in 
question has unwittingly supplied an argument of be- 
fuddling ingenuity worthy of German skill, and the 
German propagandists will doubtless see that it is 
translated into Spanish for the delectation of the 
"sister republics to the south of us." But what are 
little things like that, if one is pursuing the ideal or is 
being very clever? 

Let us admit the principles of national expansion 
and of the balance of power. Let us even admit the 
fact of human selfishness and the fact that, in our 
little phase of cosmic progress, God seems on the side 
of the big battalions and does not wish the righteous 
to remain foolish and unarmed and. to leave the field 
to the devil leagued with science. Indeed, let us 
graciously permit natural law to preside over the 
world. In that way we shall clear our vision and 
address ourselves sanely to our part in the world's 
work. Impiricism is no substitute for " imperialism. " 
We have to make national expansions square with 
the equity of facts, not with sentimentality, and con- 
form to the constantly rising standards of chivalry, 
humanity and enlightenment that are held by the 
chivalrous in contradistinction to the brutal nations. 



56 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

We have to limit our internationalism to that which 
rests upon a healthy nationalism, a scrupulous regard 
for the laws of human nature, an enlightened self- 
interest, and a balance of power in the hands of our- 
selves and our friends. It may possibly be proved in 
the court of events that through the rotten autocracy 
of the Czar, and equally through the impotent and 
anti-democratic autocracy of the Bolsheviki, the Rus- 
sian people may turn out to have shown themselves 
to be unprepared at present to rank among the fit 
from the viewpoint of international evolution. If so, 
the loss of some of their eastern territory may be des- 
tiny's intended warning to them that they must gird 
themselves for true progress. 

One of our American Bolsheviki propounded 
this question: — If Germany should evacuate and 
restore Belgium, Northern France and Serbia, should 
give up Alsace-Lorraine, should get out of northern 
Italy, — in short, should practically meet all the pri- 
mary demands of the Allies ; if she should relinquish 
all her colonies (and should also, by implication, for- 
feit the Bagdad scheme) on the one condition that she 
should be allowed to keep certain of Russia's Baltic 
provinces, could one regard such a peace as tolerable? 
By one of a different school of thought, he was an- 
swered that if Germany did all this, and if our present 
Alliance was continued with a policy directed to reor- 
ganizing the rest of Russia into a powerful democracy, 



ULTRA-IDEALISM AND DIPLOMACY 57 

doing the same for China, and leaguing the two with 
Japan and the rest of our Allies to suppress Deutch- 
tum from the East ; and if we of the West continued 
our wall of steel, our monopoly of the sea, and our 
moral, economic and political boycott to suppress 
Deutchtum from the West, then possibly we might 
feel that we were on a sure road to achieve our aim, — 
a situation where we were free from the menace of 
Prussianism. This radical idealist was horrified 
at such a possibility, and not at all because it 
was not practicable but only because it was not 
ideal! It savored of "the old diplomacy," of 
the balance of power, and of all that the 
Utopians decry. And yet, unless the heart of 
Germany can be meanwhile crushed by an abso- 
lutely overwhelming aerial offensive, or by a military 
defeat, some such programme seems not altogether un- 
likely, whether in the name of a fictititous peace or 
in the shape of many years of "war as usual" in a 
sub-acute form less costly to human life. At any rate, 
the reaction of the Anglo-Saxon to "f rightfulness" is 
the exact opposite of that of the Teuton, and the new 
offensive in the West may well recall to us the single- 
ness of our war aim and the need to free our interpre- 
tations of policy from all traces of cant and to work 
with forethought for the ultimate achievement of that 
aim, however long the struggle. 

If there were anywhere excuse for a war weariness 



58 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

which might even momentarily allow unsound opti- 
mism to obscure cold reason and hard fact, surely- 
such excuse would lie with our Allies who have for 
four years endured the agony and the terrific nervous, 
mental and moral strain of the war. Scarcely touched 
until now by this stress, America should be for her 
Allies an anchor to windward, standing especially for 
practical, far-seeing wisdom and common sense. 
Doubly heavy, therefore, is the obligation of this 
country to keep itself free from every sophistry and 
from the pitfalls of dangerous idealism. 



VIII 

SENTIMENTALITY AND REALITY 

It is not only in "muddying the water' ' and in 
many ways confusing and obscuring the plain and 
all-sufficient reasons for which the nation, speaking 
through Congress, declared war, and the consequent 
purpose for which the nation carries on the war, that 
to give heed to the hif alutin school of thought may be 
dangerous to the national morale and clarity of aim. 
The souls of some of its exponents are too elevated, it 
seems, even for righteous indignation, the noble An- 
glo-Saxon counterpart of the base and puerile Teuton 
hate. Yet we know that the hot hate of righteous 
indignation is the essence of the fighting spirit. This 
spirit some still work to subdue with mawkish non- 
sense about the goody-goody German people. Every 
chivalry, code of honor, and religion has sought to 
crystalize ever higher standards of human conduct. 
The success of such efforts has marked the stages of 
civilization. Prussia adopted empty hypocrisy and 
spurned all true civilization. Prussia stood for the 

59 



60 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

brazen theory that her brutal aim justified any and 
every means. She taught these things for generations 
to the German people with such success that prac- 
tically not a German voice in Germany is heard in 
protest here in the twentieth century against syste- 
matic villainies on a scale the world has never before 
seen. Success is become the only touchstone of Ger- 
man morality. Are we not to hate these people as 
they are to-day ? Are we not to know and say frankly 
that the only guarantee against the Prussian menace 
will be a world situation in which these people shall 
be powerless to carry on their cunning and barbarous 
work, shall be held down and compelled to begin now 
to learn the ethics and morals of civilization? When 
they have done so ; when they have really changed, if 
they can, it will be time enough for generosity. 

The same mawkish sentimentality in some quarters 
has steadily opposed the threat of economic boycott, 
one of our most effective weapons in the long task 
ahead, and one which the President clearly indicated 
in one of his later addresses. Finally, our Na- 
tional Chamber of Commerce verified, by a vote of 
1,200 to 100, the fact that American business men 
had the good sense to see the power of that weapon 
and the patriotism to be willing to use it. This fact, 
doubtless painful to some few ''liberals" of a certain 
misguided kind, was welcome indeed to most Ameri- 
cans. So, too, the vigorous action of Congress in au- 



SENTIMENTALITY AND REALITY 61 

thorizing the Custodian of Enemy Property to break 
up the network of officially promoted German eco- 
nomic interest which the Kaiser's Government has 
spread here as it has throughout South America and 
the world generally. 

On a day when our British kinsmen were pouring 
out their blood most generously in heroic resistance 
to the Hun's onrush, an educational officer at Wash- 
ington, who evidently is not in recent touch with the 
Administration, speaking through the official bureau 
of information, created to promote the interests of 
America at war, not the interests of any special school 
of thought, found time to revive the discarded theory 
of the excellent German people in contradistinction 
from the Government whose crimes those same people 
seem so willing to applaud. This was done in connec- 
tion with an advocacy of a continuance of teaching the 
German language in our schools. We are, forsooth, to 
eschew the sober hate of the evil even to-day ; to pre- 
pare for a millennium which is to follow the war; to 
get ready to have relations with these delightful Ger- 
man people. Can anything excel this sickening count- 
ing the chickens of a reformed German race before 
the new bird has even been evolved ? It has taken the 
Hun all these centuries to progress ( ! ) — from Atilla 
to Atilla. To some idealists he looms benign to-mor- 
row. It is a pity that anyone should still ask the 
American people to swallow this theory, and especially 



62 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

from an official ladle, however unauthorized. When 
the present madness of the Prussian has passed and 
when the Teutonic race, in repentance and shorn of 
dangerous power, has learned the A B C of chivalry, 
honor, humanity and true civilization, if it be capable 
of them, then it will be time enough to consider the 
question of casting aside economic and moral boycott 
and military power as the sure means of keeping tJie 
world safe for honorable peoples, for Anglo-Saxon 
civilization and for America. Until then, an Anglo- 
Saxon, Celtic, Latin, Slav and Oriental league may 
well remain essential to a policy to make impossible 
the continuance or recrudescence of Teutonic preten- 
sions and of the foul means employed by Teutonic 
hypocrisy. By all means let genuine adult Americans 
learn the German language so far as by doing so they 
can better fight Deutchtum. But let it no longer be 
made available in our schools as a convenience to the 
propagandists of "kultur." 

This question of the German language in our 
schools touches in a way the whole issue between na- 
tionalism and internationalism ; between the view that 
America is for Americans and is to seek solidarity in 
enlightened self-interest and the played-out sentimen- 
tality that would make America an asylum and a 
dumping-ground for all races irrespective of their po- 
tentialities as loyal, assimilable and healthy stock for 
American citizenship. Diseased liberalism and sound 



SENTIMENTALITY AND REALITY 63 

Americanism will be found arrayed on opposite sides 
on all questions touching this general issue. The 
lessons of this war should cause us to adopt a policy 
lacking neither decision, thoroughness nor force. We 
have seen the effects of the German newspapers, of 
the German alliances, societies, and "vereinen." We 
have seen the effects of our thoughtlessness in allow- 
ing this imperium in emperio to be planted, nourished 
and brought to its poisonous flower upon our hospit- 
able soil. We see on all sides the results of an almost 
criminal neglect to look to the rapid Americanization, 
distribution and assimilation of our excessive immi- 
gration. The broad issue is whether America is to be 
run with the primary aim of becoming the best pos- 
sible nation, with confidence that only so can it make 
its most effective contribution to world progress, or 
whether America is to be sacrificed to all kinds of 
sentimental and Utopian theories in directly seeking 
world progress through internationalism at the ex- 
pense of nationalism. A policy based upon the only 
wise decision of this question of principle would be 
very unlikely to spend the money of the American 
taxpayers to teach to immigrants or to Americans of 
recent citizenship the languages of the countries from 
which their blood comes. Moreover, our public schools 
can find occupation enough in teaching the rudiments 
of learning, and especially the foundation of decent 
character, conduct and citizenship; and foreign Ian- 



64 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

guages may well be left to those who attend commer- 
cial schools and will need them in their business, and 
to those who carry their education to a point where 
it is important that they should peruse foreign litera- 
ture not available in the English language. 

A wise policy of assimilation would likewise tend to 
eliminate all the minor solidarities within the nation 
which run counter to the national solidarity which 
must hereafter be insisted upon. On the same prin- 
ciple must serious consideration be given to the ques- 
tion of buying out and putting an end to the foreign 
language press, with the exception, perhaps, of a few 
publications to be printed in English as well as in the 
foreign language, which could thus serve the newly 
arrived immigrant not only with information but 
with a "pony" for the study of English. It is not 
that the foreign language press as a whole is in sub- 
stance baneful; but it can hardly be denied that it 
works as a deterrent to the learning of English and 
as an intellectual link with the country of origin, and, 
therefore, is inevitably, as now conducted, a hindrance 
to rapid assimilation as well as to the single-hearted 
and single-minded allegiance which America must 
hereafter unflinchingly exact from all citizens. 

The namby-pamby sentimentality of the interna- 
tionalist tendency accounts largely for the scandal 
of our failure to enact, even to this day, scien- 
tific immigration laws. The literacy test is, of 



SENTIMENTALITY AND REALITY 65 

course, absurd; for it would inevitably preclude in 
many cases healthy and desirable stock while admit- 
ting degenerates, only the more dangerous because 
armed with a trace of education. Some years ago 
it was suggested that the criterion of admission should 
be an economic one based on the ratio between the 
wage-scale here and the wage-scale in the country of 
origin. It was pointed out that such a test could be 
elaborated so as automatically to exclude the most 
generally unassimilabie races. One plan would be 
the admission of foreign laborers only under contract 
entered into by the Federal government on behalf of 
different States where labor was needed, — a plan 
which would work in perfectly with the task of dis- 
tribution and assimilation and with the necessity of 
protecting American labor from any inequitable com- 
petition or economic disturbance. Some have sug- 
gested that admittances should be based, by races, 
upon fixed proportions related to the numbers of 
those races already here. All those who have scien- 
tifically studied the subject are agreed that examina- 
tion should be made at the point of departure and 
that the most important question in the case of every 
immigrant is not whether he is educated, but whether 
he is of a stock readily assimilable and entirely free 
from physical, mental or moral degeneracy. How 
crying is the need of such a standard can be seen by 
reference to the appalling proportion of newly ar- 



66 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

rived foreign blood revealed by the statistics of Amer- 
ican asylums, penitentiaries, etc. In the face of all 
these real American concerns, the eyes of high-brow 
internationalism remain fixed largely upon the mirage 
of Utopia, not only in peace times, but, more tragically 
still, even during the war. 



IX 



IMMIGRATION AND LABOR 



Just now the immigration question is chiefly inter- 
esting in the relation to the war of certain of Ks 
phases, notably that of the supply of labor, and, in 
particular, of agricultural labor. Nowhere is timely 
efficiency more vitally necessary than in planning to 
meet the demand for agricultural labor. The Presi- 
dent cannot attend to everything. With a war coun- 
cil the country's mind would be easier as to this and 
its other vital interests. It would like to know, for in- 
stance, who will till the soil for the food we are to eat 
and to save for our Allies when so much manhood 
must be called to the colors. 

From the fourth of February last the Federal Gov- 
ernment undertook a registration of enemy aliens in 
the United States intended to be thorough both in its 
scope and its elaborate sufficiency for purposes of 
individual identification. That registration of enemy 
aliens had rather the look of a half-measure. For the 
enforcement of the immigration and naturalization 

67 



68 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

laws, for the selective draft, for the control of crime 
and for the matter of an inventory of labor resources 
a registration of all persons would have been highly 
desirable. By holding all house-holders responsible 
for the registration of those under their roofs, it 
would seem that even so great a task could be carried 
out within a reasonable time. Particularly because it 
is the truth that there is, so far as the public is in- 
formed, no reason to believe that the all-important 
problem of agricultural labor has yet been surely 
solved, there is a special reason why it would be desir- 
able that the Federal Government should register at 
least all aliens. If such a thorough-going registration 
were carried out, then in case of default of agricul- 
tural labor it would be a simple matter for the Gov- 
ernment to arrange for the admission of an asmy of 
Chinese laborers to be distributed where needed for 
the production of this year's crops. Such Chinese la- 
borers could be admitted upon certificates giving them 
the right to remain under the supervision and at the 
call of the Department of Labor just so long as their 
labor was required as a war measure on the farms of 
the United States. Chinese laborers would be easily 
distinguishable. After the expiration of their right to 
be here, they could be easily identified and returned to 
China, because every Chinese would be required to 
show either his certificate of registration as an alien 
or his certificate showing him to be a Chinese brought 



IMMIGRATION AND LABOR 69 

to this country by the Department of Labor in the 
ranks of an auxiliary agricultural army. With uni- 
versal registrations, the same could be done even with 
foreign agricultural labor of any nationality. We 
need no mercenaries to do our fighting, but we may 
sooner or later need them to raise our crops. If so, 
such an arrangement would impinge in no way upon 
the interests of American labor nor would it add at all 
to the permanent foreign population. Here is a very 
practical reason why there should be Federal registra- 
tion not of enemy aliens only, but of all aliens, or, 
better still, of all persons. 

The introduction of contract labor under Gov- 
ernment contract and careful Government protection 
and supervision and in a case where the home supply 
of labor for a national need was wanting would clearly 
be free, too, from all the objections to ordinary con- 
tract labor. As a measure ad lwc, and for a limited 
time, it could not fairly be objected to. Chinese labor 
is being used in France behind the lines. The Gov- 
ernment surely owes it to the American people either 
to adopt some such measure or to give a convincing 
guarantee that they have assured not only ample 
labor for war industries, but also the agricultural 
army that is urgently and absolutely necessary if we 
are to have the bumper crops required from now until 
the war's end and the world's recovery from its devas- 
tations. "Food will win the war" perhaps, but has 



70 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

the Government taken steps to insure the production 
of the food for this and the following years? 

An encouraging activity of the Department of 
Labor at Washington was seen in the survey of labor 
conditions throughout the country summarized by the 
United States Employment Service. That report 
tended more or less to show that the country was 
suffering rather more from bad distribution than from 
actual scarcity of labor. Reports of the kind, if con- 
tinued, should be a very useful guide to workers 
seeking to know where employment may be found. 
It was gratifying to hear, also, that various instru- 
mentalities for dealing with the labor problem were be- 
ing co-ordinated at the beginning of the year, al- 
though some of the announced appointments of 
personnel presented a riddle of a kind the country is 
growing accustomed to. News came from Washing- 
ton, too, that the United States Public Service Reserve, 
a branch of the Department of Labor which has been 
doing a very useful but little advertised work, was in- 
itiating a campaign to recruit vast numbers of men 
suitable for the shipbuilding industry and willing to 
be listed as prepared to enter that industry where 
and when needed. Now come reports that there will 
be set up still further machinery for handling the 
labor problem. 

If the Department of Labor is at last to undertake 
to be what its name implies, then there is hardly a 



IMMIGRATION AND LABOR 71 

department at Washington upon which fall more 
vital responsibilities. It should be responsible for 
the supply of labor of every kind, and just now it is 
useful again to raise the exceedingly grave question 
whether means have been taken to guarantee the 
country the vast supply of agricultural labor which 
will be needed henceforth. This question is such a 
vital one that a trustful nation should not be asked to 
remain ignorant and able only to guess whether or 
not it has been satisfactorily solved. Why does the 
United States Public Service Reserve not list agricul- 
tural and other as well as shipbuilding labor? Why 
do not the Secretary of Labor and the Employment 
Service take the country into their confidence as to 
whether and how they have solved this question? It 
is a question calling for prompt constructive plan- 
ning, foresight, and skilful administration. It is ear- 
nestly to be hoped that it is receiving such treatment. 



X 

REFORM AND RESTRAINT 

Laws and constitutions, the only sure foundation of 
liberty and of true democracy, have ever been re- 
garded as rather annoying obstacles by the type of 
ultra-radical, who demand the millennium and noth- 
ing less right here and now. That is a disposition 
that no American Government can afford to condone. 
It is, therefore, rather a pity that in failure to give 
the senate an opportunity to conform or reject on 
March 4, 1917, the, as a whole, somewhat mediocre 
cabinet; in taking over the railways, wisely, to be 
sure, but in advance of valid authorization ; and, it is 
said, in a proclamation last February regarding the 
use of airplanes, there should have been official de- 
parture from sound constitutional practice. No harm 
has been done, but still its legal advisers should, as 
a matter of principle, always protect American ad- 
ministrations from falling at all into such courses, 
which, like the drift toward exclusion of the people's 

72 



REFORM AND RESTRAINT 73 

elected representatives from their due voice and re- 
sponsibility in matters affecting the conduct of the 
war, tend too much to an autocracy that may be pleas- 
ing to some " liberals " so long as they think its power 
will be used in furtherance of their own cherished 
ideas, but which is essentially bad for the Republic. 
A dangerous school of radical thought is heartened, 
too, by the fact that, despite its extraordinary party 
partisanship, unprecedented in peace and still more so 
in war, the present Administration has yet found occa- 
sion for considerable liaison with the devotees of that 
school, and for occasional pronouncements susceptible 
of exploitation by it. A wise diplomacy plays every 
card that it holds, and no one need condemn as a 
diplomatic move a discreet measure of appeal even to 
overstrained idealism or to a German people endowed 
for the purpose with fictitious virtue. The shrapnel 
of a diplomatic offensive is not to be condemned even 
if very few of the bursting fragments strike the mark. 
But what may be done, within narrow limits, as a 
diplomatic move takes upon itself an entirely differ- 
ent complexion if it is carried too far, and if it tends 
to play into the hands of a well-defined propaganda 
that is entirely foreign, in its unsound aims, to 
American conditions or needs, and to the best tradi- 
tions, thought and spirit of true Americanism. The 
little group of "American Bolsheviki" forget that 
America is not Russia, and that we have in this coun- 



74 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

try no economic or social evils for which our splendid 
and flexible institutions will not afford us sound rem- 
edy. An American administration could certainly 
not forget these facts ; but it would be very unfortu- 
nate if its official utterances should ever lend them- 
selves to exploitation by a hifalutinism, an unsound 
idealism and an ultra-radicalism in which can be seen 
the germs of possible disaster. 

The foregoing fragmentary and cursory comments 
may perhaps serve as a slight indication of some of 
the dangers of these poisons and of their workings in 
war as well as in peace. The American people will 
have to distinguish clearly between unquestioning de- 
votion to their country and unthinking acquiescence 
in whatever political theories may be advanced. In 
doing so, both during the war, at the end of the war, 
and after the war, they will have to look now, as ever, 
to the Senate and the House of Representatives always 
to add a clear and dominating voice for common sense 
Americanism to the discussion of every question. So 
far as our present policy is swayed, and it should 
hardly be so swayed at all, by questions not strictly 
germain to the war, those questions and the different 
schools of thought which grapple them turn largely 
upon old problems of socialization which will doubt- 
less be presented in new difficulty as a by-product of 
the war. There are, therefore, printed herewith a 



REFORM AND RESTRAINT 75 

number of chapters upon different aspects of sociali- 
zation and upon a few other subjects perhaps not 
without interest at this time. 

Unity of national spirit and aim, based on intelli- 
gent decision and self -discipline, is an absolutely dif- 
ferent thing from unanimity due to unthinking ac- 
quiescence and compliance. The former is the way 
of democracy; the latter of autocracy. No citizen of 
a democracy can escape his individual duty to par- 
ticipate in the decision of the nation's problems. The 
response of the American people to the demands of 
the war has been magnificent. It is not the nation, 
but its leaders, who must bear the responsibility if 
the splendid spirit and resources of the nation have 
not been made as promptly and efficiently fruitful of 
results as should have been the case. The nation, 
however, is responsible for its chosen leaders and has 
the clear duty to exact from those leaders the direc- 
tion and quality of leadership that its aims and its 
interests require. No blind support of any particular 
administration affords an escape from the difficult 
duties of citizenship in a democracy. Administrations 
are quite fallible and nothing should be permitted 
to confuse or obscure the plain fact that the nation's 
true interests may or may not always coincide exactly 
with the particular ideas and views of any adminis- 
tration. Any administration is always the servant of 



t 76 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

the people and is its authoritative leader only when 
it follows courses which the nation approves. The 
nation, therefore, can never escape and must always 
be awake to its responsibility. 



XI 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING ALLIANCE 

A permanent entente or alliance of all the Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples will be the greatest event and 
the most far-reaching good, not only to America, but 
to the world at large, that can arise out of our asso- 
ciation with the civilized powers of Europe and else- 
where in the task of sweeping the Teuton menace 
forever from the path of civilization. A little thought 
will convince the overwhelming majority of the 
American people of this fact. A wise leadership in 
our Government will see and act upon it. But in a 
democracy the degree to which wise leadership dare 
outrun the positive and active conviction of the mass 
of voters is, in a good cause, almost always too small 
for the country's good. Thus it is that political ex- 
pediency and opportunism, based on lack of faith in 
the people, has been the most fruitful cause of disas- 
ter in democracies. Even when the necessity of a 
policy is clear, if it is outside the focus of intense 

77 



78 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

popular interest and desire, it may not gain cogent' 
governmental advocacy. Witness the twin crimes of 
British military unpreparedness in 1914 and our own 
for many years prior to 1917. This Anglo-American 
affinity in the shortcomings of democracy is the very 
reason why there should now be made clear to the 
American people the facts of all the other worthier 
affinities and of all the common-sense considerations 
of policy and self-interest which point undeniably to 
a permanent close accord of the English-speaking peo- 
ples. If these facts be not made clear to the American 
people, another great national advantage may go by 
default. 

To state the obvious with fiery zeal is a gift vouch- 
safed sometimes to successful politicians; but to sim- 
pler minds it is as difficult as "defying a mutton 
chop" in fine dramatic form. The stronger the case, 
the greater the restraining distaste for hyperbole. 
This is another reason why democracies are in dan- 
ger of missing their obvious advantage. 

Those of us whose education has not been too 
"practical" to allow them to stray even so far as the 
common sense of Caesar 's Commentaries will recall one 
thing — that Caesar classified the people of the north 
according to their resemblance or difference in "lan- 
guage, institutions, and laws." A better criterion has 
yet to be found. It is this leaven that molds and 
this cement that holds to us our own newer popula- 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING ALLIANCE 79 

tions. It is this that gives us our national entity. 
The same bond is just as unfailing in the potentiality 
of its interplay between America as a whole and 
the British Empire as a whole. Better than any 
others can the English-speaking nations say to one 
another, "All the world is queer save thee and me — 
and thee's a little queer" — which is as near the ideal 
relation as we are likely to get in international rela- 
tions ! 

Perhaps the crowning impertinence of the German 
and German-American propaganda, in the blindness 
of its pan-German conceit, was the bland announce- 
ment that "Anglo-Saxonism must be vigorously com- 
bated in this country ! ' ' It is funny as well as stupid 
and malevolent. If Anglo-Saxonism stands for any- 
thing it stands for liberty, for self-government, for 
fair play ; it stands for truth, justice, and kindliness. 
It is precisely what our citizens of German descent 
came here in order to embrace when they fled from 
the Prussianism of 1848. Prussianism has never 
changed. Anglo-Saxonism, thank God, has not 
changed. And it is a heritage to be jealously guarded. 

British blood, so largely Celtic in the British peo- 
ples as a whole, still easily predominates over any 
other strain in the American nation. We all know 
too much of biology and heredity to dismiss the fact 
lightly or to be willing to see it cease to be the fact. 
With the blood came the bases of our national life. 



80 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

No German schloss nor Grecian temple, however fair, 
can sit well upon our old Colonial foundations. If 
America ever ceases to be an Anglo-Saxon nation, if 
Americans ever cease to be intellectually and spirit- 
ually the close kinsmen of the other English-speaking 
peoples, then either America will have ceased to be 
America or else the British peoples will have lost their 
identity. The preservation of our priceless common 
heritage of political, moral, and social ideas — of lib- 
erty, steadfastness, chivalry, and kindliness — is the 
essence of the continued existence of America and of 
the British peoples. Who better suited, then, to 
covenant for the joint upholding and defense of the 
precious thing that gives to each its identity, its dis- 
tinction, and its reason to continue in the world? 

Safety for continued development, gained by joint 
defense, then, may be set down as the paramount aim 
of an alliance of the English-speaking peoples. To 
all of them there are many adventitious advantages. 
Although this war has shown how much more fancied 
than real is our security, still, in the last resort, we 
are somewhat less exposed to attack than is Great 
Britain, on whose side the defensive advantage may 
be thought the greater. For this reason some few 
of the peculiar advantages to America may be em- 
phasized. For example, we should no longer stand 
exposed to the danger of having to vindicate the 
Monroe Doctrine alone in the face of a strong com- 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING ALLIANCE 81 

bination of hostile Powers. The joint use of coaling 
stations throughout the world could be arranged. 
Our tenure in the distant Philippines, Hawaii, Alaska, 
Samoa, and Guam would be doubly guaranteed 
against challenge — far more than doubly guaranteed 
if the relative size and location of the British and 
American fleets be considered. Our paramount posi- 
tion in Panama and the zone of the Caribbean, with 
the protectorates and quasi-protectorates we are 
obliged to maintain there, would be far freer from 
possible anxieties. Indeed, it is not unlikely that in 
a post-bellum adjustment of war debts England would 
have no objection to certain territorial readjustments 
to make sovereignty conform more logically to re- 
sponsibility, strategy, neighborhood and economic 
interest in that region. 

An Anglo-American alliance would go far to con- 
solidate the interest of the West in equality of op- 
portunity and the "open door'' in China. The alli- 
ance would make even more unassailable the common 
position of all the English-speaking peoples in regard 
to any future immigration questions. However lib- 
eral, all of them recognize their absolute obligation 
to allow no emigration to the serious economic detri- 
ment of their own workers. After the war all of 
them, and especially the United States, certainly 
ought to recognize the necessity to restrict immigra- 
tion to a point where it can never threaten the dis- 



82 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

tinctive character and the solidarity of their peoples. 
If the Chamberlain idea of a customs union of the 
British empire is revived it will be important to the 
United States to enjoy, as an ally, special benefits. As 
one another's best customers, the English-speaking 
peoples should have no difficulty in making excellent 
commercial arrangements. In the carrying trade and 
in some other affairs they might define respective 
spheres. 

Examination will show all these examples of ad- 
vantage through an Anglo-American alliance to be 
mutual ones. How would such an alliance affect the 
world? The answer is the open record of what the 
two Powers stand for to-day — fairness to all, free 
institutions, truth, justice, and humanity, peace with 
honor, and evolution along the lines of the highest 
human progress under nature's laws. An Anglo- 
American alliance would be the strong fortress of 
these ideas in generations to come. It would be the 
rallying point and sure defense of worthy nations 
imbued with these principles. Already we see nearly 
every spirited people arrayed with us against those 
who would turn high civilization's clock back to a 
time before its dawn. Already we have a league 
fighting to enforce peace. An Anglo-American alli- 
ance will perpetuate its framework. It will stand 
ready for the rally of the honest and high-minded na- 
tions of the world if ever again the tocsin calls to 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING ALLIANCE 83 

defense against the ruthless, the treacherous, the un- 
just. So it would be good for the world as a prac- 
tical safeguard of peace. 

Our noble French ally would surely join us in a 
general understanding for the promotion of peace and 
possibly for other purposes. So, too, would other 
like-minded peoples. With the French we have the 
Celtic tie, and many a bond of admiration of their 
glorious qualities — bonds which we wish ever to pre- 
serve. The world is not ripe for internationalism 
any more than the nation is ripe for the abolishment 
of the family. Any present attempt at a really uni- 
versal league to enforce peace would be impracticable 
and too likely to prove an incubator of group intrigue. 
The practical league to enforce peace for our kind 
of civilization is to be found in a league of those who 
believe in it — a league to keep the preponderance of 
might in the hands of those who believe in and prac- 
tice right. Here the Allies may well all fall in line 
together. An Anglo-American alliance would facili- 
tate this post-bellum world aim — a league to prevent 
recurrence of the horrors that have racked humanity 
since 1914. 

The argument for a concurrent but distinct alliance 
of the English-speaking peoples, rests, as has been in- 
dicated, upon special bases and would have special 
objects and effects, aside from its convenience as a 
strong bloc in the world's peace party. The impor- 



84 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

tance of those special bases — in our common language, 
institutions ,and laws and in our strong blood rela- 
tionship — cannot be overrated, and, on this side of the 
Atlantic, it seems to be thoughtlessly very much un- 
derrated. To emphasize it is to state plain facts, not 
opinions. Quite likely the very obviousness of the 
grounds for our sympathy with the British peoples 
accounts for the fact that our sympathy with France 
has seemed continually to receive far more official 
encouragement. The subject under discussion, as 
well as the above fact, makes it needless here to praise 
France, which is beyond praise, or to stress the reality 
and warmth of American sympathy for the glorious 
republic, or for Italy or indeed for any other of our 
Allies. Rather is it necessary here to invite cool com- 
mon sense and reasonable judgment to consider the 
practical policy of Anglo-American relations. And 
the better to clear the way for this consideration there 
is preliminary work to be done. 

Of course we are now in de facto alliance with 
Great Britain, and our honor has been pledged, we 
understand, in a manner as binding as the national 
conscience itself is binding upon us to see this war 
through to victory. That there is no formal treaty 
ratified by the Senate, is of course a quibble too small 
for the most meticulous mind and one that would 
revolt the heart. Two great peoples, of common lan- 
guage, of common institutions, of common laws, of 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING ALLIANCE 85 

common literature, philosophy, morality, and aspira- 
tions, are allied for a common purpose. Is their asso- 
ciation and comradeship being made as intimate and 
cordial as it should be made? Is a unique oppor- 
tunity for a lasting entente, invaluable to both and 
logical in every way, being availed of to the full? 
Those who have time to think of the future would 
like to feel surer that they are. 

Reports from "Washington often sound almost for- 
getful of the fact that we are co-operating as only a 
very late arrived ally and not acting independently. 
Problems that must be old ones to the British (whose 
case most fits our own) are occasionally referred to 
with a disquieting air of novelty, when, next to trying 
a thing ourselves, a British experience is naturally the 
most instructive possible and the most easily im- 
parted to us. We hear far more of French instruc- 
tion, French conference, French fraternization than 
we hear of any of these with the ally who speaks our 
own language. We do not even know that comrade- 
ship in arms in actual contact with our British cousins 
is contemplated. We do know, from the public press, 
the fine tact and generous frankness with which Brit- 
ish co-operation has been placed at the disposal of the 
Government and the army of the United States. 

Conceivably the President so values the delicate 
growth of Anglo-American good feeling and has such 
great schemes for its florescence that he seeks to 



86 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

shield it from even the hazard of rough contact. But 
surely the peoples concerned are too sensible and 
their feeling for one another is much too strong to 
admit of that hypothesis. Can it be that the dregs of 
a more than moribund tradition, or the feeling, now 
become effectively anti- American, of certain groups of 
our population is given a serious thought as a political 
obstacle to Anglo-American rapprochement? Surely 
such considerations are too small to avail at all when 
the world is in cataclysm and when the makings of a 
policy to bring blessings upon future generations are 
involved. 

Nevertheless, it may be well to indicate the task 
of sweeping away the cobwebs of historical misappre- 
ciation and of silencing group prejudice that lies be- 
fore a single-minded leadership of American opinion. 
Any " German- Americans" who oppose British- 
American accord may just as well drop "American" 
from their ambiguous title. Such opposition is op- 
position to the very nature of this country. If they 
do not like a land of Anglo-Saxon language, institu- 
tions, and laws, by all means let them return to Ger- 
many. They cannot love us and hate those most like 
us. They cannot love our institutions and hate our 
alliance for the protection of those institutions with 
the land from which they came. They cannot dedi- 
cate themselves through vereins, clubs, and German- 
language press to the fostering of the solidarity of 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING ALLIANCE 87 

Germanic tradition and at the same time remain true 
to a nation that rests upon and stands for its oppo- 
site, Anglo-Saxon tradition. There are no two ways 
about this. 

Then there are some few Americans of Irish descent 
who seem to set Ireland above America in their hearts 
and to set their hatreds above Ireland's true interest. 
Happily they are quite exceptional. The wiser ma- 
jority will feel rather to-day that her irreconcilables 
and fanatics are Ireland's worst enemies and that, 
now that the Irish people have at last been given 
the fullest opportunity to solve their problem in a 
reasonable way, that violent extremist minority, so 
far from serving Ireland, is in danger of depriving 
the Irish people of the world's sympathy. Wise Irish- 
men will see that an Anglo-American alliance would 
double America's influence for a liberal policy toward 
Ireland, that it would tend to be a solvent for ancient 
ill-feeling. As to the insensate pro-Germanism of a 
few misguided Irishmen, it is peculiarly grotesque in 
view of the absolute antipathy between the real 
Irish nature and the whole reality of Germanism. 
Indeed, very likely it is the faint Saxon trace in the 
Anglo-Saxon that has made sympathy so difficult be- 
tween the Irish race and certain English types ! 

If America is to survive as a nation, she must build 
a much hotter fire under her melting pot and must 
be much more careful about putting new materials 



88 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

into it. We must not be betrayed into a liberalism, or 
sort of dementia liberalis, too broadly international to 
condescend to concern for America's own interests. 
Group solidarities, counter-indicated for healthy, 
vigorous nationalism, must be frowned upon. Even 
the victims of dementia liberalis must have almost 
learned this lesson from the war. In the question un- 
der discussion group prejudice would appear to pre- 
sent no serious difficulty. An honest mind will find 
its defense difficult. 

There remain the esoteric fallacies of Anglophobia 
and of the " no-entangling-alliances ' ' dogma. Where 
these obsolete conceptions still darken the modern 
American mind they are symptoms due to wrong 
methods of teaching history and to the work of the 
quack doctors of our body politic. Charles Altschul, 
an American, in a small book called The American 
Revolution in Our School Textbooks: An Attempt to 
Trace the Influence of Early School Education in the 
Feeling toward England in the United States, con- 
cludes of our haphazard educational system in the 
past that "the public mind must thereby have been 
prejudiced against England.' ' Of the present teach- 
ing he adds that "the improvement is by no means 
sufficiently marked to prevent continued growth of 
unfounded prejudices against England.' ' As Mr. 
Altschul 's study shows, the somewhat dramatic exag- 
geration of Colonial wrongs, with the suppression of 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING ALLIANCE 89 

adequate portrayal of conditions in England and the 
slighting of the great efforts of many leading Eng- 
lishmen on behalf of the then colonies, has been too 
long allowed to inculcate and preserve a baseless 
Anglophobia. This is a situation our educational 
authorities have too long neglected. 

In his farewell address "Washington opposed per- 
manent and entangling alliances. He said we might 
"safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordi- 
nary emergencies. ' ' He feared "sympathy for a fa- 
vorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary 
common interest in cases where no real common 
interest exists.' ' He said: "An attachment of a 
small or weak toward a great and powerful nation 
dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.' ' 
He referred to our "detached and distant situation." 
All this, too, had for its background Washington's 
strenuous opposition to our alliance with France to 
make war upon England. Now there is nothing 
illusory in the common interest of the English-speak- 
ing peoples to defend their common form of civiliza- 
tion. There is nothing ephemeral in the need to be 
prepared to do so. There is no dangerous inequality 
of power between the United States and the British 
empire. And this war has sufficiently demonstrated, 
it may be hoped, that we no longer enjoy a * ' detached 
and distant situation." The lesson of Washington is 
the lesson of wise statesmanship, and it is not wise 



90 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

statesmanship to allow a nation grown beyond all 
semblance to its infant size and placed in entirely dif- 
ferent circumstances in a vastly different world to be 
debarred forever from exercising the sovereign attri- 
bute of making alliances. Wise sayings of the past, 
wrenched from their context, are too often abused as 
a cloak for shrinking from progress in politics. We 
forget the wisdom and recall the words. 

The question of an Anglo-American rapproche- 
ment is not to be disposed of by facile dogmatizing. 
It may range, in result, all the way from a limited 
entente to consult together in case of threatened 
attack through the limitless nuances of diplomatic 
engagements to a treaty with many specific engage- 
ments. That a lasting accord and good understand- 
ing shall be implemented between the English-speak- 
ing peoples is the main thing. The details of degree 
and scope of the alliance will require wise and de- 
liberate consideration. The immediate question is 
whether our war policy is now being so shaped as to 
lay the groundwork for the great event. 

As Washington so well understood, sentimentality 
and favors without consideration between nations are 
a hollow and unreliable thing. The real service the 
English-speaking peoples can and have rendered one 
another would give exceptional solidity to their ac- 
cord. Other nations have befriended us in the past 
because it suited their specific interest at the moment 



THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING ALLIANCE 91 

to do so. The British have stood by us on general 
principles. Who but they gave us their ungrudging 
moral support in the Spanish- American War? What 
but the British fleet has kept Germany off our backs ? 
What but the attitude of Britain has made our en- 
forcement of the Monroe Doctrine until now an easy 
task? Who but our British forbears blazed the way 
for France and for the world and have ever stood 
for political and intellectual liberty, constitutional 
self-government, and free institutions? To whom 
better than to their British kinsmen can Americans 
turn, in any crisis, assured of substantial sympathy 
of instinct and of idea, on the sure basis of a common 
tradition, a blood relationship and common language, 
institutions and laws? We love France. We are 
allies of France. We always remember Lafayette 
and Rochambeau. Are we not in danger of forget- 
ting other and very profound truths of our inter- 
national relations? 

Our Government has most abundant powers and 
has the faith of citizens. In prosecuting the war to 
victory wise constructive action will be expected of it 
upon all policies incidental to the war. High among 
such policies stands that of Anglo-American relations. 
It is most earnestly to be hoped that the American 
Government and the American army and navy will 
act with vision in order that both at home and abroad 
our course may be laid always in ways conducive to 



92 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

the great consummation so clearly favored by the 
course of events — a firm accord of the English- 
speaking peoples. 

An Englishman said this of 1776: "There hap- 
pened to be on the English throne a German gentle- 
man named George. Over in Virginia there was an 
English gentleman named George. Now the German 
George started in to deny the rights of the English 
George. Being an English gentleman, of course he 
would not stand that. So he went to war and de- 
feated the German George. ' ' May it be recorded by 
history that in 1917 a German ruler brought the 
British and American nations into firm and enduring 
friendship, and was himself confounded in the 
process ! 



XII 

JAPAN, RUSSIA AND THE WAR 

The situation reported to have precipitated the 
question of Japanese intervention in eastern Siberia 
is the alleged possibility that German prisoners, pro- 
German Russians or outlaws might ultimately destroy 
or convert to other uses the military stores sent to 
Vladivostok by the Entente Allies for use against 
Germany, or that Germany might later be able to gain 
a foothold in eastern Siberia. If either of these dan- 
gers shall become real, then each must be weighed 
against the possible effect of protective action in 
bringing greater detriment to general Allied interests. 
The American Government is accustomed, on occa- 
sion, to deal informally with any chieftain in the 
Caribbean countries who during a revolution controls 
a bit of territory. On the same principle could not 
the Entente Allies put the case of the supplies and 
of their military interest in eastern Siberia to the 
Bolshevik authorities? The moral obligation to pre- 
vent those stores from being diverted from the pur- 

93 



94 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

pose of use against Germany runs with the title to 
them. The moral obligation upon the Russians to 
prevent a German establishment in eastern Siberia is 
equally clear. The Bolsheviki could be asked, if 
either danger be real, to request the Entente Allies 
to take the necessary protective measures through 
Japan or otherwise. If the Bolsheviki should refuse 
to make such request it would then be difficult for 
them to escape effectually branding themselves as 
friends of the German cause. 

The question of some military action by Japan in 
eastern Siberia, lately understood to be receiving con- 
sideration in Tokio and the other Allied capitals, is 
one to be viewed in the light of the immediate and 
also of the more remote future. It is a question to be 
looked at to some extent from the individual view- 
point of Japan, but above all it must, of course, be 
examined from the joint point of view of all the 
Entente Allies, including Japan. If Japan wishes to 
take any action she has to make out a case showing 
clear justification on the grounds of legitimate and 
pressing Japanese interests. There is thus far no 
evidence known to the public of the present existence 
of any real jeopardy of those interests. Such a mo- 
tive would have to be overwhelmingly proved, and, in 
the present state of the world, could hardly conceiv- 
ably be acted upon with any justification unless any 
action taken were squared entirely with the great joint 



JAPAN, RUSSIA AND THE WAR 95 

Allied interests, before which all else must at present 
yield. The question in its many aspects is a nettle 
to be grasped firmly. To slur it over instead of 
frankly to discuss and to decide it would work for 
estrangement and misunderstanding just when friend- 
ship and understanding are of the greatest impor- 
tance. 

It would seem natural, then, that the representatives 
of Great Britain, France, the United States, Japan 
and Italy should sit down together for frank discus- 
sion. The Japanese would be asked to state what their 
Government would like to do and why. The conferees 
would point out the arguments for and against action 
in Siberia and the dangers of such action. The in- 
evitable upshot of such a conference would be that 
the Japanese Government would either make its pol- 
icy conform fully to Allied war aims or would openly 
betray those aims in favor of fancied selfish advan- 
tage, to be grasped ruthlessly at the expense of friends 
and Allies. The latter course is inconceivable. That 
it should be even thought of at all in any quarter is 
perhaps attributable to the mistaken policy of the 
Japanese Government by which the present question 
is shrouded in mystery, due to the lack of any pub- 
lished reports emanating from Tokio. This is not a 
military question, to be safeguarded by secrecy, but 
rather is a matter of world opinion and politics, in 
which secrecy is dangerous in fostering sinister specu- 



96 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

lation. It would seem clear that from such frank 
conference as mentioned above there should emerge a 
decision and a programme perfectly conformable to 
our joint aim — to remove for good, and as soon as may 
be, the Teutonic menace. 

What, then, would be the decision of such a con- 
ference ? A telegram from Amsterdam quoted a Ger- 
man newspaper as epitomizing the question in the 
terse statement that Japanese intervention in Siberia 
would result in either an alliance between Germany 
and Japan or an alliance between Germany and Rus- 
sia. Certainly either of these alternatives would be 
repugnant to the true interests of Japan in the long 
view of world affairs, just as it would be deeply 
damaging to the other Entente Allies. Inasmuch as 
we cannot for a moment attribute to the Japanese the 
gross disloyalty, so contrary to their traditions and 
so destructive of their future relations with the "West, 
that would be implied in a Japanese-German rap- 
prochement, we may look for a moment at the alter- 
native of a Russian-German understanding. That, 
too, is seen at once to be absolutely counter-indicated 
for the interests of Japan as well as for those of her 
allies. Besides these quite obvious dangers, there is, 
of course, most serious objection to any action not 
absolutely required by the military necessity and 
safety of the Allies, which, even if justifiable in a 
general way, could nevertheless be seized upon as a 



JAPAN, RUSSIA AND THE WAR 97 

weapon to weaken our moral position and complete 
solidarity. The possibility of Japanese or any other 
action in Siberia under present conditions is fraught 
with peril. Complete frankness, wise deliberation 
upon the present and future bearings of the question, 
and, on the part of all, a single-minded and magnani- 
mous devotion to the Allied purpose of this war — the 
elimination of the Prussian menace and the further- 
ance of future peace — will be required in the highest 
degree if a sound policy is to result. 

To advert again to Japan in particular, the future 
of Japanese interests, like that of our own, is de- 
pendent upon the destruction of the Prussian menace. 
With the aim of the war achieved Japan's interests 
will be safe. Otherwise they will never be. It is 
quite true that Japan, equally interested, should now 
make some serious sacrifices for the common cause. 
But on the sea and in Mesopotamia or elsewhere, now 
or later, an occasion can surely be found for import- 
ant military action by Japan quite apart from any 
doubtful venture in Siberia just at this time. 

As to Russia, in forecasting or analyzing any action 
whatsoever by the present Bolshevik power, there is 
one thing above all others to bear in mind and that 
is this: To an international Marxian Socialist there 
is only one aim (and one to which every possible other 
consideration is to be sacrificed) , namely, the aim to 
expedite a universal proletarian revolution, which in 



98 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

his mistaken view is the only road to a better state 
of national and international society. It is indispen- 
sable to keep ever in mind this plain fact, frankly 
avowed by Trotzky and reflected in Lenine's policy, 
as the one criterion for judging action by those now 
predominating in power, if not in numbers, in Russia. 
Granting this, we should not overlook the appalling 
hypothesis that these international Marxian Socialists 
might conclude that to let Germany spread over Rus- 
sia as far as possible in order that, whether in condi- 
tions of formal peace or not, the two proletariats 
might intermingle, might be the best means, in their 
opinion, to achieve their one aim — a war for a uni- 
versal proletarian revolution. Given the state of 
the world and the nature of Prussia and the temper 
of the more conservative majority of Russians, few 
could share any belief in the success of such a pur- 
pose or of such means for its attainment. Still 
fewer will have the patience, imagination and cre- 
dulity to look upon such a course of events as a very 
hopeful means, as matters now stand, for the defeat 
of Germany within any reasonable time through an 
upset due to Russian ferment working from within. 
The fascinated rabbit does not destroy the boa-con- 
strictor that has swallowed him. In looking upon 
Russia in relation to our own desperate struggle, we 
shall do well to stick to more practical and immediate 
considerations, 



JAPAN, RUSSIA AND THE WAR 99 

Looking into the future, whether or not Russia be 
wholly evacuated by Germany as a condition of quasi- 
peace, and whether this war shall abruptly end with 
a definite destruction of the Prussian menace or shall 
fade into a long-drawn-out struggle, during which the 
present alliance of the West shall continue to reduce 
that menace by siege with its economic and moral 
weapons, the coup de grace to the ambition of Prus- 
sian militarism for world domination may conceivably 
have to be looked for eventually from the East and at 
the hands of Japan, of China and of Russia. Such con- 
tingency, however, would have to await the growing 
up in the vast part of Russia still free from Germany 
of a new Russia with a new spirit and willing to fight 
for something else than a universal proletarian revolu- 
tion as the stepping-stone to vague and chimerical 
social ideals. It would have to await at least a sober 
Russia, clearly seeing its own salvation in co-operation 
for Allied victory. Such a Russia would not misun- 
derstand Allied intervention in the common interest. 
An utterly impotent and hopeless Russia might neces- 
sitate it in any case. To convert a disillusioned Rus- 
sia to reunion in sanely socialized democracy and to 
aid such a Russia in internal regeneration for strong 
resistance against the Teuton power is one of the 
most urgent and difficult tasks of Allied policy. Is it 
being energetically dealt with? 

That the Far East, like the Near East, is a front 



100 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

demanding major political strategy on the part of the 
United States and our Allies is slowly becoming gen- 
erally recognized. At the beginning of March it was 
those minor questions in Eastern Siberia that seemed 
first to begin penetrating the consciousness of the pub- 
lic with the fact. The great task of saving Russia and 
of helping Russia to repel Deutchtum from the East 
is one in which their geographical situation, their 
military power, and their policy clearly suggest the 
possibility, at the proper moment, of an important 
role on the part of the Japanese nation, with whom, 
for this and for general reasons, our allied relation- 
ship should be attentively fostered and strengthened. 



XIII 

AMERICA, JAPAN AND THE WAR 

Since events in Russia have brought the Far East 
more vividly to mind as within the scope of the war, 
and also because of America's traditional interest in 
that part of the world, a few further observations on 
the subject may not be out of place here. While re- 
vealing nothing not already known or surmised and 
discounted by those who follow such matters, the 
Bolshevik publication of foreign office archives af- 
forded a school of practical diplomacy which should 
be useful to a public too prone to conceive of the 
conduct of foreign relations as a mysterious, far-off 
affair hardly touching the real interests of the aver- 
age citizen's life — than which nothing is further from 
the truth. What was published in regard to the 
Russo-Japanese understanding of 1916 hardly justi- 
fied the rather sensational caption given it by the 
editors of state papers at Petrograd ; but it did bear 
interestingly upon the long-known fact that Russia 
and Japan had agreed to support one another as 

101 



102 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

against third parties in the assertion of such "special 
interests in China ' ' as the two Powers might mutually 
agree to claim as growing out of their relations to 
that empire. That such an understanding should 
have been entered into illustrates again the extreme 
sensitiveness as to their position in the Far East 
which has possessed the political thought of the Japan- 
ese for some years. The feeling referred to was quite 
overdrawn so far as it affected the United States. 
America is not China's keeper, and, while in no wise 
disposed to abandon the legitimate commercial and 
other rights and the assurance of fair play for our 
citizens in China, it has not been the policy of the 
United States to obstruct Japan's natural and legiti- 
mate interests there, whatever Japanese jingoes may 
have said to the contrary. 

With the fall of the old Russian imperialism of 
territorial aggrandizement, and the succession of the 
Bolshevik imperialism of doctrinal aggression, fell 
also the exceedingly convenient Russo-Japanese under- 
standing. Instantly there was necessitated a reorien- 
tation of Tokio's foreign policy. It had to look 
further West, and the first result was the American- 
Japanese understanding embodied in the Ishii-Lansing 
notes. Now, although the Lansing note only recog- 
nized undoubted facts and need not be given interpre- 
tations of any alarming comprehensiveness, neverthe- 
less American official recognition of Japan's special 



AMERICA, JAPAN AND THE WAR 103 

interests in China had thus become something of 
greatly increased value to the Japanese Government, 
and, therefore, the power to give or withhold it was 
one of our national diplomatic assets of no mean value. 
Hence it was very proper to assume that the Ishii- 
Lansing exchange of notes was not a nudum pactum, 
or contract without consideration. As to the prob- 
able nature of the consideration from Japan, which 
must have moved the Government at Washington, it 
seemed that some valuable participation in the war, 
and probably a big allotment of Japanese shipping to 
the Allied cause, must have entered into the under- 
standing, especially as it was intimated that the 
United States was also to assign to Japan a certain 
amount of steel, now so precious an article in our war 
preparation. 

In his exchange of notes with Viscount Ishii, Mr. 
Lansing drew heavily upon the treasury of this na- 
tion 's diplomatic influence when he handed out Amer- 
ica 's official recognition of certain Japanese special 
interests in China. The coinage of a nation's diplo- 
matic influence is limited, and is a national asset of 
which the Government of the day is the mere cus- 
todian and trustee. That influence is a national prop- 
erty, and the people are the cestui qui trustent. 
Whether through amiability or through idealism, no 
Government ever has the right to expend the diplo- 
matic influence of a nation otherwise than for the 



104 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

vindication of a right, the redress of a wrong, or the 
definite benefit of the nation as a whole, any more than 
an ordinary trustee has the right to use trust funds 
for purposes, however good, unless they advantage 
those whose trustee he is. 

Were the Japanese really making or to make any 
sacrifices for the successful prosecution of the war at 
all commensurate with their position as allies or with 
the benefits they expected to reap ? Many assurances 
had been given of their desire to do so, and it seemed 
to be the duty of this country, when engaged in im- 
portant special negotiations with Japan, to suggest 
ways and means. Was or was not the Ishii-Lansing 
understanding to prove a nudum pactum? When the 
extension of Japanese suzerainty over Corea was a 
fait accompli, the American Government hastily be- 
stowed the precious favor of its recognition of the 
new situation without gaining for this country any 
favors in return. Of course this matter of China was 
quite different, both in nature and in scale. But it 
was fair to hope that Mr. Lansing had not indulged 
in another game of "give away" diplomacy with the 
national treasury of American diplomatic influence 
in China as his stack of chips ; and the country long 
awaited the answer to the question. 

It now appears, happily, that a substantial contri- 
bution of Japanese shipping is soon to be forthcom- 
ing. Was there any further consideration? And is 



AMERICA, JAPAN AND THE WAR 105 

not Japan to do more, also, as an Ally and as 
a beneficiary of the war's success? Japan has got, 
subject to the peace conference, Germany's Far East- 
ern territories. Japan has heavy general obligations 
to the Entente as an ally. The Tokio statement some 
months ago that " Japan's assistance to her allies 
cannot reach the extent of infringing upon the necessi- 
ties of her national existence ' ' is reasonable enough so 
long as ' ' the necessities of national existence ' ' is given 
a definition not unreasonable in its comprehensiveness. 
Aside from shipping, nothing is known as to the large 
question of Japan's making some still more important 
contribution to victory. That Japan will wish to do 
this can hardly be doubted. The capture of Kiaochow 
and of Germany's insular possessions in the Far East 
gives to the Japanese Government a lively interest in 
the war as a whole and in some of the ultimate ad- 
justments. But the question of just what form 
Japan's active contribution to victory shall take is a 
difficult one. Since the Germans were long ago swept 
from the Pacific, it has seemed at various times that 
the Japanese navy might more fully join forces with 
us in the Atlantic or the Mediterranean ; that the sub- 
marine-free route to the Persian Gulf might have been 
used for Japanese troops to re-enforce the British 
army in Mesopotamia; that Japanese ships might 
carry that army its supplies ; or that Japanese troops 
might possibly be transported to the iEgean to help 



106 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

destroy Germany's Bulgarian gangway to the Near 
East. 

The difficult question of how to use the power of 
Japan must be left to be pondered in consultation by 
the competent Japanese, American and Allied authori- 
ties ; but for the moral effect upon Germany and her 
Allies, as well as for the material advantages, it is to 
be hoped a new way may be found to remind the world 
quite emphatically of the fact that Japan is still at 
war, earnestly and to the end, and is ready to make 
material sacrifices in order to hasten that complete 
victory which is as necessary to her safety as it is to 
our safety and to the maintenance of civilization. 
With Japan loyally willing to exert its full power in 
the war, it is for the Allies to discover the best 
method for Japanese co-operation now and later. A 
sobered and reunited Russian people, welcoming help 
against the common Teutonic foe, may, it is to be 
hoped, supply the answer. 



XIV 

CHINA, AMERICA AND JAPAN 

When Viscount Ihsii, the present Japanese Am- 
bassador at Washington, was here last autumn on a 
special mission, he said in allusion to the "open-door" 
policy in China : . . . "I assure you that a closed door 
in China has never been and never will be the policy 
of my Government. The door is open, the field is 
there. We welcome co-operation, and competition, all 
tending to the betterment of the equal opportun- 
ity. . . . We want good government, which means 
peace, security and development of opportunity in 
China. The slightest disturbance in China immedi- 
ately reacts upon Japan. Our trade there is large 
and increasing; it is valuable to us and China is our 
friendly neighbor, with vast and increasing potentiali- 
ties for trade. . . . Not only will we not seek to assail 
the integrity or the sovereignty of China, but we will 
eventually be prepared to defend and maintain the 
same integrity and independence of China against any 
aggressor. For we know that our own landmarks 

107, 



108 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

would be threatened by any outside invasion or in- 
terference in China." In these words the distin- 
guished diplomat reaffirmed the pledge of the Im- 
perial Japanese Government to uphold the "open 
door" and the principle of equality of opportunity, 
and to respect the integrity and independence of 
China, and indicated that his country would be pre- 
pared to defend these latter if they should be threat- 
ened. 

The conditions in China which Viscount Ishii de- 
scribed as desired by Japan, and to support which 
he pledged his Government, will at once be recognized 
as precisely those which were expressed by Hay, were 
fostered by Root, were implemented in a broad and 
far-seeing policy by Knox, and which are still the 
aims of American diplomacy in China. As the 
speaker intimated, it is quite true that geographical 
and other facts have given to Japan in the neighbor- 
ing field of Chinese enterprise a certain natural ad- 
vantage over more remote although earlier cultivators 
of that field, such as the United States and Great 
Britain. To quarrel with this fact would be to quar- 
rel with the map. Due note of Viscount Ishii 's 
declarations and their cordial reception by Americans 
in that spirit of friendly good understanding and 
co-operation, which he bespoke in each of the 
speeches made during his mission, should go far to 
demolish the suspicion that has been maliciously and 



CHINA, AMERICA AND JAPAN 109 

sometimes thoughtlessly spread abroad in this coun- 
try. So, too, should the work of Viscount Ishii have 
the equally important effect of eradicating from the 
Japanese mind the suspicion that America, so long 
as our legitimate rights and interests are respected, 
will ever have anything but a sympathetic and con- 
siderate regard for the very special interest in China 
which actual facts have given the Japanese empire. 
Much harm has no doubt been done through the 
dissemination in both countries of seeds of misunder- 
standing sown by the tireless German propagandists. 
Those are supposedly being dealt with. It remains 
for the two nations honestly to strive for an invariable 
mutual understanding as firm as the historic founda- 
tions of their friendship. Changes in Russia, as has 
been said, brought about the necessity for a reorienta- 
tion of diplomacy in the Far East. The war itself 
has brought about other changes there. All these 
facts give special impetus to a movement for closer 
relations between the Japanese and American Gov- 
ernments, just as they also bring to the fore the 
important question of Japan 's fuller participation 
with her allies against Germany. The time is espe- 
cially favorable for brushing away fancied difficulties, 
and, as Viscount Ishii recommended, examining facts. 
In this way relations that have always been friendly 
may be placed quite beyond the reach of misunder- 
standing. 



110 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

There appears to exist no valid ground of Chinese 
objection to the provision of the Ishii-Lansing ex- 
change of notes whereby America recognizes certain 
special interests of Japan in China ; and, indeed, there 
is much else in those documents which should be as 
welcome to China as have been the many similar dec- 
larations of past years as to the integrity of that 
empire and as to equality of foreign opportunity for 
economic enterprise there. The Chinese Government's 
" protest' ' was a very reasonable and understandable 
affair. The new agreement's aim "to silence mis- 
chievous reports" was recognized. The Chinese Gov- 
ernment made the point that with respect to special 
relations due to territorial contiguity, China would 
only recognize them in so far as they were provided 
for by treaty. 

This is natural enough, for no one could deny the 
right of the Chinese Government to grant, to deny, 
or to reject any specific foreign claim according to 
the standing of such claim under those treaties and 
agreements to which China itself is a party and 
which, therefore, alone bind the Chinese Government. 
If the Ishii-Lansing understanding stipulates any con- 
templated restriction upon China's liberty of action, 
that restriction could only be read into the passages 
where opposition to encroachments upon China is 
pledged. So long as the Chinese Government values 
its independence it can hardly object to pressure of 



CHINA, AMERICA AND JAPAN 111 

that kind, even if it may theoretically be directed 
against China itself. The statement that the Chinese 
Government will not be bound by agreements between 
other nations and to which its Government is not a 
party would, of course, go without saying. ' ' The pro- 
test," then, resolves itself into a notice that the Chi- 
nese Government is aware of the new agreement and 
takes this occasion formally to reserve the right to 
consider its foreign relations to be governed exclu- 
sively by its treaties, propinquity or no propinquity. 
If the Chinese have on this subject thoughts that go 
deeper than the surface of diplomatic documents, that 
is quite natural. Since the beginning of her contact 
with foreign Powers, China has lost territory to Great 
Britain, France, Russia, Germany and Japan, the 
last named power falling heir to the German and part 
of the Russian holdings. If the Chinese Empire is 
to remain a great Power in the Far East, reliance 
must be placed less upon diplomatic documents than 
upon internal regeneration. China has the good-will 
of the western Powers, but to put her own house in 
order, to establish honest and patriotic administration, 
to modernize her Government, to develop her vast re- 
sources and her national vigor, and so to demonstrate 
to the world her worthiness to survive in accord with 
nature's laws, — this is the stupendous task of patriotic 
citizens of the Chinese Republic. 

The two practical points of Far Eastern policy 



112 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

to-day would seem to be for us, first, how to make the 
most effective use of Japan's belligerancy as an Ally 
in the war, and, secondly, how most effectively to 
co-operate with Japan now and later in such Far East- 
ern affairs as have any practical concern for the 
United States. To promote these purposes both Amer- 
icans and Japanese can do good service by informing 
themselves of the facts of the Far Eastern situation, 
by expelling from their minds every seed of mutual 
distrust, and by entering in good part upon a habit of 
matter-of-course collaboration and sympathetic good 
understanding, resting upon reality rather than upon 
sentimentality. 



XV 



WAR DIPLOMACY IN LATIN AMERICA 

Achievement of the nation's good is to be meas- 
ured not by complacent standards of relativity, but 
by absolute standards of possible accomplishment. 
By such criteria will all the war activities of the 
Administration at Washington in due time be judged, 
and stand or fall at the bar of public opinion. 
Viewed from any standpoint of what it was reason- 
able to expect, this Government's achievement in 
swinging Central and South America openly and ac- 
tively to our side in the great war of principles being 
fought out with military, with moral, with intellect- 
ual and with economic weapons must be set down as 
far from brilliant. 

It is true that Brazil, Cuba, Panama and Guatemala 
and now Nicaragua and Costa Eica, be it said to their 
honor, have gone to the full extent of aligning them- 
selves with the United States of America by declaring 
war on Germany. It is true that many of the other 
republics, great and small, have taken varying action 

113 



114 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

to trace their names with varying distinctness upon 
the honor roll of the nations of the western hemisphere 
who dare and care for the right. But what shall be 
said of the great Argentine Republic, where German 
intrigue still rages along with brazen German efforts 
for future economic domination? What shall be said 
of the virile Chilean nation, still in its equivocal atti- 
tude of expressed sympathy with those countries which 
take action against Germany, combined with mysteri- 
ous failure on its own part to come out into the open ? 
The case of Mexico may, perhaps, be dismissed with 
the thought that there a continued tolerance of Ger- 
man machinations is only one more symptom of a 
political madness incidental to the chaos of the last 
few years. The apathy of Colombia, our great neigh- 
bor on the Caribbean, is to be ascribed, of course, to 
the curious failure of our Government to press to 
ratification the treaty intended to set our relations 
with that country on their true basis of special friend- 
ship. 

For American interests now and later it is obvi- 
ously most important that the economic and political 
tentacles of the German octopus be loosed from the 
republics of this hemisphere. Failure to achieve this 
will be a calamity to the United States. Failure to 
achieve it will be a calamity likewise to each Latin- 
American country that suffers such failure. In the 
first place, it is the obvious interest of each of those 



WAR DIPLOMACY IN LATIN AMERICA 115 

countries to free itself from a cunning network of 
sinister schemes for Germanic domination. In the 
second place, the ideals, the sincerity and the good 
sense of all Latin- American countries are now being 
tested and examined in the glare of this all-revealing 
war by the public opinion of the world, and especially 
by the public opinion of the United States, which will 
take due note of the reality or unreality of its friend- 
ships on these continents. 

German propaganda in South America goes for- 
ward on a colossal scale. Of one cunningly worded 
pro-German and anti-American pamphlet, 50,000 
copies were distributed throughout that continent. 
This is only one of innumerable cases. In a letter to 
the President Mr. Creel said only three months ago of 
our own propaganda : ' ' Much has been done, but it can 
only be regarded as experimental. Machinery has 
been created and tested, and we are now able to com- 
mence 100 per cent operation in all confidence. It 
is for this that I ask sanction. ,, Apparently the 
American Government is now getting ready to begin 
propaganda on a large scale! Germany is repre- 
sented throughout Latin America by skillfully trained 
agents. Edwin Morgan, in Brazil, and Henry P. 
Fletcher, in Mexico, are the only trained and experi- 
enced diplomatists that were left to the United States 
as ambassadors or ministers in this hemisphere after 
Mr. Bryan's " spoils'' orgy of 1913. Brazil, where 



116 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

we have a trained diplomatist as Ambassador, 
has declared war against Germany. Roughly speak- 
ing, it may probably be said that the attitude of 
South American countries in the war is good or bad 
in each case in direct ratio to the quality of the dip- 
lomatic representation vouchsafed America in each 
country during these critical times. 

That Latin- America should openly and dramatically 
side with the United States was so obvious, so de- 
sirable and so reasonably to be expected that the 
actual situation must be set down as very disappoint- 
ing. And in searching for the reason of this, how 
is it possible to escape ascribing it to these three 
causes, namely : a lack of vigorous and intensive dip- 
lomatic policy; second, too many inexperienced and 
inefficient diplomatic representatives of the United 
States; and, third, tardy and utterly inadequate pro- 
paganda of truth and right to overwhelm and stamp 
out the ceaseless intrigue of our ever cunning and 
ubiquitous enemy? 



XVI 

I 

THE COLOMBIAN TREATY 

More than a year ago, in a letter addressed to the 
chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions and by him made public, the President said : 

"I take the liberty of writing to ask you if it will 
not be possible to press the pending treaty with Co- 
lombia again for ratification. I must admit my 
surprise that there should be any objection to its con- 
sideration or to immediate action upon it in view of 
the unusual circumstances of the moment. 

"The main argument for the treaty and for its im- 
mediate ratification is, of course, that in it we seek to 
do justice to Colombia and to settle a long-standing 
controversy which has sadly interfered with the cor- 
dial relations between the two republics. ... It seems 
to me that those who oppose this treaty must be 
thoughtless of the present situation.' ' 

The treaty under consideration during those few 
weeks a year ago was Mr. Bryan 's changed adaptation 
of an elaborate arrangement for the settlement of the 

117 



118 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

Colombian affair, which had been the subject of ne- 
gotiation by Secretary Knox. It is hardly regrettable 
that the earlier treaty failed of prompt action because 
the Colombians had appeared to commit the indiscre- 
tion of seeking to appeal to an American political 
party and a partisan section of the American press 
over the heads of the country 's then government ; and 
that was a tendency too unwholesome to be encouraged 
by success. Mr. Bryan introduced into the treaty a 
somewhat apologetic tone, among many other changes ; 
but its aim and general effect remained the same. 
During the discussion in the Senate there is said to 
have been introduced the argument of fear of Co- 
lombian collusion with Germany. Naturally the 
Senate's reaction to this idea was unfavorable to 
ratification. Senator Lodge rightly repudiated 
every vestige of the idea that America should tolerate 
the semblance of blackmail or of buying military 
safety. There is no evidence, however, that there was 
any justice in imputing to Colombia an attitude which 
would give the basis to so intolerable a theory. It 
seems to have arisen entirely from things said in 
Washington. Senators Lodge and Knox joined also 
in insisting upon a stipulation that the negotiations 
should not be considered as questioning the American 
title to the Panama Canal Zone, and the two Senators 
were equally insistent that the treaty should by no im- 
plication reflect either upon the honor of the United 



THE COLOMBIAN TREATY 119 

States or upon the course of the American President 
under whom the speedy construction of the Panama 
Canal had been made possible. There was, moreover, 
some discussion as to whether Secretary Bryan's ad- 
dition to the sum to be paid Colombia by the United 
States was justified. Senator Knox championed rati- 
fication of the treaty on the floor of the Senate in a 
speech in which he urged action upon the broad 
grounds of justice, reasonableness and national inter- 
est. Since then, so far as public knowledge is con- 
cerned, this treaty has lain in the Senate Committee 
on Foreign Relations in a more or less amended form 
and still awaits action. 

It is as true to-day as when the President said it 
that the treaty should be ratified in order to do justice 
to Colombia and to replace unsatisfactory by cordial 
relations between the two republics. It is perhaps 
still truer to-day that " those who oppose this treaty 
must be thoughtless of the present situation," because 
of these considerations. To bring the German people 
to their senses and so to expedite a safe and satisfac- 
tory peace there is no mightier lever than the German 
fear of commercial ostracism; of the loss of foreign 
trade. There are few things much more important to 
keeping American interests in a safe position vis-a-vis 
German ambitions than in the alignment of all Latin- 
America in sympathy, friendship and economic co- 
operation with this country, and thus preventing any 



120 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

dangerous German preponderance in our hemisphere. 
For these purposes there is perhaps nothing which 
would have a more useful effect just now than the set- 
tlement of our troubles with Colombia. If the ratifi- 
cation of the treaty was deemed so very urgent one 
year ago the country may well ask what became of 
the Colombian treaty and why it should not be rati- 
fied now. 

In an examination of the question on its merits it 
will be just as well to discuss the Bryan version of 
the treaty. If there be in it the shadow of reflection 
upon our national honor or upon the great President 
to whom, more than to any one else, the world owes the 
Panama Canal it will be a simple matter for the Sen- 
ate to introduce some slight change to eliminate the 
objection. The point is that this thing should be set- 
tled and settled now, because it is right that it should 
be settled and because it is decidedly to the interest of 
the United States that it should be settled. 

This treaty should be ratified on the broad ground 
that the United States and Colombia should be 
friends ; that the time for pamphleteering and discus- 
sion has been long enough, and that, although the 
treaty has defects, still we can afford to overlook them 
for the general purpose in view. 

The treaty itself states the purpose of the two coun- 
tries to be "the settlement of their differences arising 
out of the events which took place on the Isthmus of 



THE COLOMBIAN TREATY 121 

Panama in November, 1903.' ' To most Americans 
the situation is this : Incidentally to the preliminaries 
to the building of the Panama Canal, of which we are 
justly proud, our relations with Colombia got into a 
mess, and, quite contrary to our wishes, the Colom- 
bians were made very sore. This has gone on now for 
nearly sixteen years and we should be glad to have it 
ended. Representing this feeling of most Americans, 
the last Republican administration felt, to use the lan- 
guage of Senator Knox when he was Secretary of 
State, that "so far as consistent with the dignity and 
honor of the United States and with the principles of 
justice when applied to the true facts, no effort should 
be spared in seeking to restore American-Colombian 
relations to a footing of complete friendly feeling.' ' 
Therefore, in spite of the unfavorable attitude created 
by loose and exaggerated partisan statements and at- 
tacks, informal negotiations were opened in 1912 and 
the United States offered to pay to Colombia $10,000,- 
000. The United States was to acquire an exclusive 
option to build a canal by the Atrato route (which, it 
is believed, is impracticable and will never be used), 
as well as the lease of two islands (which we did not 
really particularly need). The chief effect of insert- 
ing these stipulations was to give the arrangement in 
view the dignity of a fuller mutuality of considera- 
tion. This idea, however, was either ignored or mis- 
understood in Colombia, where these shadowy stipu- 



122 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

lations of quid pro quo were quite over-emphasized 
and treated as fresh concessions greedily sought. 
Bearing in mind these facts, it will be clear that there 
is no real difference in principle between the adjust- 
ment proposed by the Republican administration and 
the treaty now pending. The Republican administra- 
tion opened the way for direct settlement on the basis 
of a payment. The Democratic administration took 
the way thus opened and increased by $15,000,000 the 
payment offered. Whether the Republicans would 
have increased their financial offer cannot be known 
because the change of administration relieved them of 
further direct responsibility in the matter. 

The pending treaty as negotiated by Mr. Bryan 
(Article I) contains an expression of regret by the 
United States "that anything should have occurred 
to interrupt or to mar the relations of cordial friend- 
ship that had so long subsisted between the two na- 
tions.' ' In the next paragraph Colombia "accepts 
this declaration in the full assurance that every ob- 
stacle to the restoration of complete harmony between 
the two countries will thus disappear. ,, There was 
nothing of this kind in the Knox draft conventions, 
but their very proposal as bases for Colombian over- 
tures constituted in a way such an expression by our 
Government ; for if we had not regretted the situation 
we should not have initiated these efforts to mend it. 
Since the paragraph, then, is a fairly colorless state- 



THE COLOMBIAN TREATY 123 

ment of an obvious fact, it may be passed without very- 
serious objection. The Colombian expression of ac- 
ceptance does tinge the article with a faintly apolo- 
getic color, at which one tends to balk, but upon care- 
ful consideration it is seen that in the English text, 
at any rate, that implication is so unsubstantial as to 
be pretty nearly innocuous. We all know that Colom- 
bia has felt offended. With the acceptance of the 
treaty goes without saying the honorable obligation 
that the former feeling shall cease and shall give place 
to a quite opposite one. 

An enlightened and sincere Colombian might well 
say: "For three-quarters of a century our attitude 
toward the Isthmus was usually very unfortunate. 
When it became clear that the United States, as the 
leading power of the Western Hemisphere, and as 
trustee, in a sense, of the world's interest in this work, 
must build the canal we were engrossed in our former 
malady of revolutions and the play of personal ambi- 
tions aaid rivalries blinded our sight. We forgot that 
the great world would not wait upon our political in- 
trigues at Bogota, and we repudiated the Hay-Herran 
treaty after solemnly signing it. This is regrettable, 
because it was a pretty good treaty and because Co- 
lombian development has been immensely retarded by 
all these years of disagreeable relations with the 
United States. In 1909 our Government, desiring to 
clear up the situation, solemnly signed the Root-Cortes 



124 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

treaty. It did not mollify our feelings and we did not 
think it gave us enough money on account of our 
former interest in the Isthmus. We also made much 
of a provision by which we, as friendly neighbors, 
should accord certain use of our harbors. But, most 
important of all, we then had a president we were 
trying + ,o get rid of and we seized the opportunity to 
bury him beneath that treaty. We are very sorry that 
from the first we allowed personal ambitions and do- 
mestic politics to make it so hard for the United States 
to deal with us and we regret the very important part 
we ourselves thus took in bringing about 'all contro- 
versies and differences . . . arising out of the events 
from which the present situation . . . resulted. ' ' ' 

The two questions are : (1) Is Article I of the Bryan 
treaty admissible, and (2) is the sum of $25,000,000 
not too large? As to the first, looking broadly at the 
whole stormy history of Panamanian affairs, it may 
justly be said that the article might have been drawn 
with more explicit mutuality. As to this, however, it 
should be remembered that the mass of the Colombian 
people have been taught for years to know only one 
side of this question; that, although this is no affair 
of ours, still life is too short to undertake now to 
change their impression ; and that in a transaction like 
this one, which is above all a friendly one, we can 
afford to take cognizance of conditions which, strictly 
speaking, we are under no obligation to heed. We 



THE COLOMBIAN TREATY 125 

can afford to let the Colombians please themselves 
with the tone of Article I rather than prolong, by re- 
drafting the treaty, an affair already so tedious. We 
ourselves can well refer the expressions of regret to 
Colombia's exasperating course of obstruction, while 
they may think, if they like, of the final policy of 
President Roosevelt, which, we know, was so justified 
by Colombia's course that we have no apologies to 
make. 

For seventy-five years more or less interrupted at- 
tachment to Colombia has been the object of revolt 
attempted or threatened by the Panamanians, and 
very often in protest against the Colombian attitude 
toward this same question of a canal. The revolution 
was publicly foretold the moment the Hay-Herran 
treaty was rejected. Without attempting to guess 
whether Panama could have seceded if left quite alone, 
or to measure the effect of the discharge of our con- 
ventional duty to keep open Isthmian traffic, and 
without trying to appraise in degree the influence 
of the United States in the success of the secession, 
let us assume merely for the purpose of argument that 
that influence was decisive. Well, then, we have po- 
litical action. The morality of political action is to 
be judged by the standard of what is humane and 
broadly equitable and by the adequacy of the circum- 
stances which cause it. It can readily be maintained 
that Colombian indifference, or worse, to the urgent 



126 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

need that the United States construct the canal had 
reached a point justifying political action of the first 
magnitude. 

Now if an ultimatum followed by war would have 
been morally justified, how much more then was po- 
litical action short of war. Our action, whatever it 
was, was political. Hence, among other things, the 
futility of all the discussions of arbitration of any 
of the larger matters. That possibility came to an 
end when the Taft Administration initiated the nego- 
tiations which have led to the treaty now pending. 
Those negotiations, it should be clearly remembered, 
had the same essence and aims as the negotiations of 
the Roosevelt Administration leading to the Root- 
Cortes- Arosemena treaties. In all cases Colombia was 
to receive some compensation ; Panama was to be rec- 
ognized; Panamanian-Columbian relations were to be 
established, and bad feeling was to be ended. Indeed, 
the purpose of the United States has been benevolent, 
just and consistent from first to last. 

Adverting to the second question, that of the pro- 
priety of payment so large as $25,000,000, this will 
cost us $15,000,000 more than the Hay-Herran treaty 
would have cost. But the Hay-Herran treaty would 
have left the zone of the canal in the amorphous con- 
dition of a sort of dual extraterritoriality shared with 
Colombia. It failed to give us that right of eminent 
domain beyond the Canal Zone in relation to strategic 



THE COLOMBIAN TREATY 127 

considerations which we now have, and which is of 
great importance. Without further analysis, I believe 
that the contemplated situation on the Isthmus is 
$15,000,000 worth better than that contemplated by 
the Hay-Herran treaty and that, although there be 
no legal necessity, the United States can afford to 
spend this sum in order to clear up the situation with 
Colombia and between Colombia and Panama, and 
at the same time to terminate years of controversy and 
bad feeling by the satisfaction of the extremest equity 
that one friend could give another. We paid Spain 
$20,000,000 for the Philippines after we had got them 
by the right of political action. Now some persons 
want to give away for nothing, without a majority 
vote of the people, what was there bought with some 
blood and with a bonus of the taxpayers ' good money. 
But our most sentimental politicians are not likely to 
try to give away the canal. Even to-day we may, per- 
haps, feel sure of this. 

By the Root-Cortes treaty of January 9, 1909, we 
guaranteed Colombia national treatment as to the 
transport of products, mails, military forces, etc., 
across the Isthmus, freedom from tolls in the canal for 
its warships and exemption from duty and reduced 
rates for transshipment across the Isthmus of certain 
products. In connection with the simultaneous treaty 
with Panama, that republic assigned to Colombia the 
annual payment of ten of the $250,000 installments, 



128 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

payments to begin at once instead of after nine years. 
Colombia, on the other hand, was to recognize the situ- 
ation as it, in fact, exists to-day. The effect of the 
pending treaty is, in the main, similar; but under it 
Colombia receives $22,500,000 more than it would have 
done under the Eoot-Cortes one. 

We may keep what we have with the ill-will of Co- 
lombia, or we may ratify the pending treaty and with 
it rectify American-Colombian and Colombian-Pana- 
manian relations and seal a pact of friendship with 
Colombia. In an absolute study of the question, it is 
fair to look back to 1903 and the Hay-Herran treaty. 
It would have been fair for us then to pay what we 
now propose to pay if we had then got what we now 
shall have. Moreover, now we shall gain the rights to 
expect, to an even greater degree than we could then, 
the quite special friendship of the Colombian people. 
Thus from an absolute point of view practical people 
can be reconciled to the transaction. Still, they may 
ask what the friendship of Colombia is worth to us. 

Let me follow that undue reputation for material- 
ism which we used to enjoy abroad and state first the 
commercial figures. Colombia is among the half dozen 
largest of the twenty Latin-American republics. 
Even before the war our exports to Colombia led 
with about 30 per cent of all Colombia's imports. 
This is only one-third of one per cent of the total 
exports of the United States. Colombian exports to 



THE COLOMBIAN TREATY 129 

the United States constituted about 50 per cent of all 
Colombian exports, and from some of the most im- 
portant Colombian departments this ran as high as 
70 per cent. Colombia needs capital for railway con- 
struction, harbor improvements, mining and many- 
other developments. On the other hand, Colombia 
affords many opportunities, is near us and is one of 
the most promising and appropriate fields for the 
enterprise of American citizens. In the second place, 
the Panama Canal makes the zone of the Caribbean 
irrevocably the most vital field of American interest. 
Adverse and powerful political and strategic interests 
cannot exist with safety to us in that region. Our 
safety there must be assured, as the Chileans say in 
their excellent national motto, "Por la razon o por la 
fuerza" (By reason or by force). Let us try always 
to assure it "por la razon." But with this safety is 
bound up the safety of our immediate neighbors, 
among which Colombia, bordering upon both oceans, 
has a place of great importance ; and strengthened by 
special relations with us Colombia should always be 
freer from outside anxieties. Thus, with the balance 
of probable material benefit proportionally so in favor 
of Colombia we may feel agreeably free of any duress 
in the relations of the two countries. It is quite cer- 
tain that until the two countries become friends the 
door will remain closed as it now is to virtually every- 
thing American which can possibly be supplied from 



130 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

any other source, and we shall meet obstruction where 
we should find sympathetic co-operation. Do we wish 
to remedy this situation? If so, half measures would 
defeat the ends in view. The remedy must be com- 
plete if it is to have the really important results it 
should have. 

In the far-spread influence of the virile, industrious 
and enterprising Antioqueiios, among the Bogotanos, 
and elsewhere, the Colombian population of between 
four and five millions shows, with all its faults, ele- 
ments of energy and enlightenment which, With grad- 
ual emancipation from the old vices of Spanish- 
American civilization, give good hope for the future. 
Among the Spanish-speaking peoples of America, 
whose similarity and solidarity we are accustomed 
greatly to exaggerate, Colombia is among those coun- 
tries having the larger proportion of their people of 
a type and tendency likely, relatively, to become not 
antipathetic to our own. However skeptical one may 
be of Pan- Americanism, here at least is a people geo- 
graphically nearer and better adapted than many to 
mutual understanding and intercourse with ourselves. 

With conviction that there is no objection to Article 
I that is not either trivial or easily curable, or to the 
payment contemplated, there remains in some minds 
the question of what assurance we have that the 
money to be paid Colombia will be well spent and that 
in the future Colombia will act as a true friend to 



THE COLOMBIAN TREATY 131 

the United States in our vital political and strategic 
interests related to the canal and the zone of the 
Caribbean, as well as in the financial, commercial and 
industrial interests of our citizens in Colombia. In a 
message to the Colombian Congress President 
Kestrepo recorded the intention that the sum received, 
if the treaty were ratified, should be devoted to the 
improvement of means of communication. That it 
should be devoted to such enterprises as railways and 
harbor works and under some wise general plan, and 
a part, perhaps, to currency reform and to certain 
educational work of more modern spirit, is undoubted. 
Also, it would be only natural that American ex- 
perience and advice should be availed of and Ameri- 
can experts and materials made use of in the result- 
ing undertakings. Unfortunately, Spanish- Americans 
are not supposed to be noted for the qualities of ap- 
preciation and steadfastness, and there is room for 
some cynicism in this direction. Our dignity will not 
suffer if we refrain from quibbling over the form of 
this treaty or the sum involved. For the rest, let us 
make an experiment. Let us test the loyalty and 
chivalry of the Colombians and see what happens. 
Perhaps they will see that their future lies in friendly 
co-operation with us. As the Chilean motto intimates, 
where reason fails there is always force for the pro- 
tection of vital interests; but with good feeling our 
vital interests will be Colombia's. As to other inter- 



132 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

ests, such as commerce, with good feeling and with 
enterprise on the part of our citizens, whose oppor- 
tunities are peculiar, those will take care of them- 
selves. That there should be a flourishing commerce 
between the two countries is even far more important 
to the Colombian than to us. 

The seal of Colombia bears a picture of the Isthmus 
of Panama with a ship on each ocean waiting to pass 
the canal so long dreamed of. For this reminder of 
a technical loss, the bitterness of which has obscured 
the vast gain, there should then be substituted the 
clasped hands of friendship between the two coun- 
tries, which are natural allies in interest and between 
which there should be a full co-operation. 

It was unfortunate that the German menace should 
have been ill-advisedly introduced as an argument for 
the urgent ratification of this treaty of 1913. That 
may have postponed prompt action upon the treaty 
just as Colombian flirtation with our then minority 
party and the insensate effort of certain partisan 
newspapers in this country to make Colombian rela- 
tions a partisan and not a national affair killed the 
negotiations of iive or six years ago. It is to be hoped 
that the President will renew his recommendations 
and that other senators will follow the course of Sen- 
ator Knox in rising superior to tempting excuses 
for postponing a wise national policy, a policy ap- 
proved in principle by the acts of two Republican and 



THE COLOMBIAN TREATY 133 

two Democratic Secretaries of State, a policy non- 
partisan and jealously guarding the national honor 
and with it the honor of the great President to whom 
we owe the prompt creation of the canal. If there 
were any shadow of doubt upon this last important 
point, the Senate would know how to rectify it. 

We are pouring out billions upon billions of dol- 
lars to attack the German menace on the fields of 
Europe. Moral and economic influences are of the 
utmost value to the achievement of our aim — a peace 
safe from that menace. To help consolidate the 
weight of the whole American hemisphere on our 
side, it is worth while to ratify the Colombian treaty 
without a day's delay. Both justice and self-interest 
demand such action. A year ago the President urged 
it as immediately desirable. What became of the 
Colombian treaty? Why is it not now urged by the 
President and ratified by the Senate as a wise war 
measure as well as a measure of right? 



XVII 

EQUITY VS. RUTHLESSNESS 

The immediate practical reason we must win the 
aim of this war, which is to defend ourselves and guar- 
antee our descendants from the domination of Prus- 
sian brute force, is by this time, it may be hoped, 
clear to all. For this we must " carry on"; we must 
accustom ourselves to "war as usual"; we must or- 
ganize for victory, whether it come soon or late. 
When the Teutonic menace is passed the war will be 
won ; and only then. For victory we must press not 
only our military, but also our moral, intellectual and 
economic offensive, with foresight and vigor. All else 
now gives place to this. "While keeping ever before 
our eyes the compelling urgency of our immediate 
war aim, we realize that transcending it is the issue 
of two principles of world relations. We may hope, 
although we cannot be sure, that this shall be the last 
world-battle of ruthless imperialism against interna- 
tional equity and justice. Our victory should see the 
dawn of a new day between nations — not a day when 

134 



EQUITY VS. RUTHLESSNESS 135 

force will not still have its place, but a day when force 
shall be the armor-bearer of right, when right shall 
have might. If we see to this last, we may realize our 
hope. 

There is something else we must not forget. There 
is coming more than ever before into the clear light 
throughout the world a new sincerity and insistence 
of purpose within nations to make the individual and 
collective life of each nation a better life. Interna- 
tional affairs can occupy our internationalism. This 
is a national matter. America must awake and grasp 
and carry out, according to her own genius, this 
purpose. Our minds must be stretched to new scales 
of values, of duties ; to new standards of mutual obli- 
gation between citizens, of the common obligation of 
citizens to the nation as a whole, of solidarity of pur- 
pose, of co-operation. A new spirit of citizenship 
must build great policies corresponding to an awak- 
ened sincerity of purpose to make democracy as good 
as its word. The people are awakening, thinkers and 
laborers. An era is closing. We are to build for a 
new one. The soul and mind of man have been 
stirred. In the stress of war the seeds of ancient 
aspiration are germinating to ripeness for action. 
We shall not be quite the same again, nor will our 
social relations, nor will our politics, nor will our 
policies of government. And it is good that this is so. 

In the shadow of the great war is preparing another 



136 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

war, a war within the conscience of our citizenship. 
With us the question is, Shall the life of America be 
left to be ruled by ruthless economic force, whether 
applied by labor or by capital, or shall that life be 
determined increasingly by social equity and justice? 
Shall the cry of all men be for more, more, regard- 
less of what is due, and always with the one sordid 
standard of money; or shall we have a better cry, a 
cry for what is due, economically, but ever a cry for 
a richer, a more human, a finer national life? 

The immediate practical reason we must win this 
other inner war, which is to defend ourselves and 
safeguard our descendants from the domination of 
economic brute force, ought, by this time, to be clear 
to all. For this we must also "carry on"; we must 
accustom ourselves to constructive political, economic 
and sociological thought "as usual"; we must or- 
ganize for victory in the vindication of democracy, 
whether it come soon or late. When we know our- 
selves to be on a clear road of sound policy based on 
sound and dominating public opinion, when the men- 
ace of ruthless economic selfishness has been thus 
honestly met and defeated through modernized policy 
— then only shall we know ourselves to be on the road 
to victory in this peaceful war within the national 
conscience. For victory there must be pressed among 
our own citizens an educational, moral and intellect- 
ual campaign. In concentrating upon our own im- 



EQUITY VS. RUTHLESSNESS 137 

mediate aim to set our own house in order, to make 
our own great American family a happier and a 
better one, we may well be stimulated and warned by 
the fact that transcending our own problem is the 
same issue between the same principle of economic 
ruthlessness, individual or collective, and of social 
equity and justice, demanding solution in every other 
country in the world. There arises everywhere, as 
never before, the battle of social equity and justice 
against ruthless economic force, against individual 
and group selfishness. Victory will see the dawn of a 
new day within nations — not a day when economic 
force will not still have its place, but a day when the 
economic force of individuals and of groups, of cap- 
ital and no less of labor, shall be the armor-bearer of 
right in an orderly march of the nation toward the 
gradual attainment of a richer, a more human, a finer 
national life. 

Easy-going America should awake to these facts 
now. There is a curious analogy between the issue of 
the world war and impending issue presented to the 
national conscience. The international issue caught 
us unprepared. Luckily the machinery of our won- 
derful constitutional republic and the generosity and 
common-sense of the national character force upon 
us a fortunate degree of preparedness for our part 
in this peaceful war within the war that is every- 
where discernible. But these are not enough. We 



138 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

may fail in preparedness through easy-going indif- 
ference and the superficiality of intellectual indolence 
on the part of a vast majority, bounded on one side 
by ultra-conservatism and on the other by unsound 
idealism. If the majority is to rule, the majority 
must think, and think nationally, courageously and 
straight. If we do that we are sure to win in the 
inner as in the outer struggle. America is fortu- 
nate indeed in having institutions and citizenship so 
splendidly adapted to progress through orderly evo- 
lution. We are fortuante in starting with our gen- 
eral course in the right direction. We see in unlucky 
Russia a people unprepared and groping an uncharted 
course. We see there how the price of unprepared- 
ness may be progress through the tragedy of revo- 
lution. 

Thoughtless and selfish indifference can never carry 
us safely between the co-equal dangers of blind con- 
servatism and of unbridled radicalism. The reaction- 
ary and the sufferer from dementia liber alls are equal 
enemies of national reform. A new nationalism must 
arise. A new preparedness must be undertaken to 
make sure the victory of democracy at home as well 
as abroad. 

The world issue, then, is international equity and 
justice versus imperialism through ruthless force. 
The domestic issue is social equity and justice versus 
the unmitigated domination of the national life by 



EQUITY VS. RUTHLESSNESS 139 

ruthless economic force, whether of labor or of cap- 
ital. There is a striking analogy also between the 
limitations upon what it is possible or desirable to 
achieve in the reformation of international relations 
and in the readjustment of national life. These lim- 
itations rest upon the unalterable facts of human 
nature. In their recognition or non-recognition the 
visionary extremist and the practical man part com- 
pany. The real work of constructive reform, both 
in international relations and in national life, must 
be done by those who do not mistake the ideal for 
the real and who pursue the ideal ever with a clear 
realization of the facts of human nature. 

Inasmuch as the child is the microcosm of the man, 
the man of the family, the family of the nation and 
the nation, in a way, of the whole international group, 
it should not be too difficult, through appreciation of 
the analogous manifestations of human nature in all 
these forms, to reach a realization of the fundamental 
facts of nature's laws true enough to guide states- 
manship safely between attempt of the impossible 
and neglect of attainable good. Any readjustment, 
whether of international or of national life, that 
attempts to contradict nature's laws as manifested in 
human action is, of course, doomed to failure. This 
fact, however, should not be made an excuse for neg- 
lecting the great ameliorations that are practicable in 
both fields. 



140 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

The realization, emphasis and expression of indi- 
viduality, and the corollary, selfishness, is the funda- 
mental instinct and one through which evolution is 
carried forward. Unworthy and backward nations 
and tribes that fail to contribute their share and to 
discharge their proper function in the international 
body politic will gradually be surpassed and sup- 
planted by those more worthy to survive. So, too, 
in the national life. The lazy, the inefficient, the de- 
fective, the vicious — those who do not contribute their 
share — must expect to find themselves in process of 
elimination in the national body politic. In both 
fields the task is not a futile and unwise attempt to 
set aside the law of the survival of the fittest, but an 
attempt to set up and to insist upon better stand- 
ards of fitness and to modify the environment in 
order, so far as possible, to make it correspond to the 
type of nation on the one hand and of the individual 
on the other hand that a true civilization would wish 
to see survive. It is neither desirable nor possible 
to arrest the laws of evolution, but it is desirable and 
possible to turn them more and more in what the 
most enlightened thought of mankind deems the best 
direction. In short, neither internationally nor na- 
tionally should our institutions be made dispropor- 
tionately for the benefit of the unfit. 

In preserving, both as among nations and in the 
national life, a scheme giving scope to the ambitions 



EQUITY VS. RUTHLESSNESS 141 

of the fit we shall only conform to a law of nature 
upon which all human progress depends. Not to do 
so would be to remove all competition and all reward 
and so to stultify and take all zest and stimulus from 
life, both national and international. If this planet 
were in communication with other inhabited ones, 
then mankind of this earth might achieve a com- 
plete international solidarity, a planetary patriotism ; 
for we, as a whole, could then assert ourselves in 
rivalry with the races of other earths. Meantime, 
international rivalries are useful as stimuli to achieve- 
ment, and international superiorities are useful in 
satisfying the national, or group, and through it the 
individual craving for distinction. Quite similarly, 
within the nation, rivalries and rewarded superiori- 
ties are necessary as stimuli to individual effort and 
to that possibility of individual distinction, that asser- 
tion, emphasis and expression of individuality, with- 
out which national life would be merged in deadly 
stultification. Both internationally and nationally the 
progress of civilization is not to be sought in contra- 
dicting this law of selfishness, but in directing it to 
higher aims, in setting before it prizes that may be 
striven for with less damage to others, in humanizing 
the rules of human nature's game of life. 

Even a cursory indication thus brings out many 
analogies between the international and the national 
issues that are very striking. Between the means of 



142 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

perpetuating the victory of right and justice to be 
won in this war and the means of gaining and per- 
petuating victory for equity and justice in the na- 
tional life there is still another similarity. In both 
cases knowledge, mutual understanding and educated 
attention to the problem are indispensable. In each 
case all depends upon an intelligent, just and gen- 
erous public opinion on the part of a clear majority, 
backed with the potentiality of dominating force. 
After the war, that majority may be found among the 
nations in an alliance of the English-speaking peo- 
ples leagued with their allies who are now fighting, 
or who may later join us, on the side of right, equity 
and justice to the world. Within the nation that 
majority must be found among citizens who are will- 
ing to stand for social equity and justice in the na- 
tional life ; who are willing, even at seeming sacrifice 
of personal interest, to help create a national life so 
much finer and richer that a share in it will be better 
and more satisfying to the human heart than what 
is now enjoyed by those deemed most favored. 

At this point consideration of the international 
issue leads into the field of diplomacy, with its inter- 
national law, its leagues, alliances and understand- 
ings, its spheres of influence, its tariff, commercial 
and financial arrangements; its hopes in arbitration 
and in the keeping of rivalries within humane bounds 
— a field as wide as human interests, but as limited as 



EQUITY VS. RUTHLESSNESS 143 

any other by the facts of human nature. On the 
other hand, the national problem leads straight to 
consideration of the subjects of centralization of 
power in the national Government, paternalism in 
Government, socialism in the true modern sense, and, 
above all, to the need of that informed, active and 
high-minded public opinion without which democracy 
is doomed to failure. 

If it be admitted that the national life is not now 
so good as it should be and as it could be made, it 
follows inevitably that its amelioration must be 
worked out through a certain degree of gradual so- 
cialization of our Government, along with increased 
centralization and paternalism. It is, therefore, high 
time that these subjects should be studied. An as- 
tounding number of otherwise well-informed Ameri- 
cans have scarcely a dictionary knowledge of the 
meaning of such words as socialism, syndicalism, an- 
archism, and so on. In its essence, socialism is a 
policy seeking to promote more economical produc- 
tion and more equitable distribution of wealth. 
There is surely nothing here to be shy of. Few would 
be willing to admit a reluctance to go so far as that ! 
Among intelligent modern Socialists the Marxian idea 
of class war is pretty dead. Even Government owner- 
ship is being supplanted a good deal by the not very 
sensational idea of socialization through governmental 
regulation, toward which this country has at last made 



144 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

some progress. It is high time that those who are 
enchanted with the status quo should cease to treat 
"socialistic" as a vague synonym for "damn." It is 
equally misleading that wild-eyed agitators should so 
often cover their vagaries with the word. We do not 
want socialism in any of the forms in which it has 
been worked out on paper, but we already have, and 
we shall have more and more that is socialistic in 
principle. Moderate Socialists of sincerity and com- 
mon sense and unterrified "conservatives" who are 
generous and open-minded need hardly find them- 
selves too far apart to co-operate in such socialization 
as our relatively very fortunate country needs. 



XVIII 



SOCIALIZATION 



Some persons believe that after the war there will 
be in the United States a strong reaction from the 
degree of socialization through Government control 
to which the war has brought this country back 
toward an individualism as little regulated as before. 
Of course, it is easy to point to many causes for con- 
gratulation in American life. It has many splendid 
phases; it affords the widest opportunity; it may be 
praised in innumerable respects. It is probably the 
best so far attained. Many persons, conscious of the 
good and possibly overlooking the^evil, are sincerely 
satisfied and cling to a belief in the old doctrine of 
laissez faire. They would perhaps doubt that there is 
with us any great issue between social equity and jus- 
tice and a too little mitigated domination of the na- 
tional life by ruthless economic forces. It may, there- 
fore, be well to indicate the existence of the issue by 
enumerating some of its manifestations in unsolved 
problems as they fare under the degree of the tradi- 

145 



146 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

tional laissez faire to which the nation still tends nor- 
mally to cling. 

Modern war forces an individualistic nation to 
reorganize itself for its common good, for a particular 
purpose. It is no less true that the efficient pursuit 
of the common good in time of peace equally calls for 
such reorganization. But in time of peace, not being 
compelled from without, an individualistic nation 
neglects to reorganize itself. We have all seen the 
radical changes forced upon America by the necessity 
of efficiency for the purposes of war. We have to-day 
a degree of centralization and paternalism quite new 
to us. We have seen our present Administration 
forced to revert to the principle of controlled com- 
binations instead of enforced competition in industry*, 
transportation, etc. Quite aside from the principles 
adopted as war measures, which many think will be 
afterward abandoned, it is worth while to remember 
that prior to 1913 the United States had made con- 
siderable strides forward in centralization and pa- 
ternalism and in legislation that may be called social- 
istic in the proper sense. 

About twenty years ago untrammeled economic 
force on the part of capital reached perhaps its height. 
The progressive policy of President Roosevelt and his 
Attorney General, now Senator Knox, grappled the 
problem, made the anti-trust law effective and set us 
on the road to the control of economic force in the 



SOCIALIZATION 147 

hands of capital. In President Taft's Administration 
we had the proposal of Federal incorporation, through 
which the Government would have all information 
necessary to supervision of business, backed by the 
"rule of reason.' ' This would have led to the prin- 
ciple of treating excessive profits as evidence of mo- 
nopoly and to insistence by the Government that the 
vast economics of combination should, after securing 
reasonable profits, benefit the nation in the form of 
lower prices and good wages. "We were on the road 
to a wise policy, centralized, paternalistic and social- 
istic, to be sure, but of infinite good to the American 
people. This reference to that policy will suffice to 
make the point that it is the exigencies of peace, as 
well as those of war, which inevitably drive America 
forward on this road. To-day it may be untrammeled 
economic force on the part of labor that is in turn 
reaching its height and in turn equally calls for gov- 
ernmental regulation on behalf of the whole people. 
There is another class of legislative activities of a 
humanitarian character, not so obviously related per- 
haps to the one issue of the control of economic forces, 
but equally calling for the abandonment of laissez 
faire and the adoption of a marked degree of cen- 
tralization and paternalism. In regard to measures of 
the kind referred to there may be mentioned the na- 
tional interests recognized, for example, in the report 
of President Roosevelt's Commission on National 



148 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

Vitality and President's Taft's Commission on Em- 
ployers' Liability and Workmen's Compensation. In 
this purview falls also much of the philosophy of 
what has been known as "The Wisconsin Idea." 

Here we encounter all those human problems hith- 
erto largely neglected by the Government and left 
upon the laissez faire theory to local or private phil- 
anthropic activity. There is a growing sense that so 
many of the things which most intimately affect hu- 
man happiness can no longer be decently neglected 
by a Government which exists for the good of the 
people. Every year at Christmas time, in an appeal 
for charity, we can read of "the one hundred worst 
cases" in our large cities, and be reminded that inno- 
cent and merely unfortunate people may, so far as 
our intervention as a Government is concerned, be 
brought to the point of perishing. In the same great 
cities there are horrible tenements and bad conditions 
of sanitation and housing. Our Government gives 
free medical advice about hogs and cattle, but the 
people are left largely to charity hospitals, to take 
patent medicines still shamelessly exploited through 
some of our newspapers, or to quack doctors into 
whose clutches they may be drawn through chance. 
Matters of playgrounds, recreation grounds, libraries, 
public baths, civic centers and decent amusements are 
left mainly to private effort, or to the individual 
work of a few enlightened communities, instead of 



SOCIALIZATION 140 

being governed by any thoroughgoing or adequate 
policy. Little is officially done to break down through 
education the cruel and un-Christian attitude toward 
illegitimacy and unmarried mothers. All these situa- 
tions cry out for the creation of a national depart- 
ment of health and welfare. 

In order to achieve a triumph of deductive reason- 
ing, Adam Smith, realizing that the world was gov- 
erned by economic force and by human sympathy, 
wrote two complementary books which together should 
prove his thesis. It is significant that every one read 
"The Wealth of Nations/ ' but nobody read the 
"Theory of Moral Sentiments." It would be difficult, 
even if one would do so, sharply to divide matters 
affecting human happiness and suffering according 
to the degree in which they affect the welfare of the 
nation as a whole and are, therefore, concerns of the 
nation's agent, its Government. But it should be 
axiomatic that the quality of the future nation con- 
cerns those who are preparing its inheritance. The 
great problems of the happiness, the quality and the 
welfare of the American nation, now and hereafter, 
should not be hidden beneath the interests of busi- 
ness. Business is good, to be sure, but except per- 
haps in that to be busy is an essential to happiness, 
it should be remembered that it is a means to an end 
and not a means in itself. Doubtless the new reali- 
zation that there are proper and improper functions 



150 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

for middlemen and that there are necessary and 
unnecessary industries will be a timely reminder of 
this truth. At any rate, if we are to modernize our 
policies and improve our national life we must set our 
eyes upon new national aims. 

Certainly the nation is concerned in the rudiments 
of eugenics, in marriage and divorce laws, in sex 
hygiene, in the falling birth rate of native Americans 
and in the almost untrammeled reproduction of the 
unfit. Here again are matters for a Federal Depart- 
ment of Health and Welfare. It is to be hoped, too, 
that shaken out of stupid tradition by the war, our 
educators, clergy and press may cast aside old hypoc- 
risies and seize this opportunity for sane education in 
those phases of the sex question which are known 
to have such a terrible bearing upon the future of 
the race. If the American nation is to endure as such 
and to be worthy of its inheritance, the immigration 
problem is another that goes to the source of things 
and that must be handled sincerely and scientifically. 
We would better not forget that our criminal statis- 
tics are the worst in the world and that our asylums 
are crowded with the unfit, disproportionately of 
foreign birth. 

Then, too, not only for the newly arrived foreigner, 
but for the native-born American, our educational 
system suffers from lack of uniformity. It addresses 
itself too much to book learning, often superficial, 



SOCIALIZATION 151 

and too little to the conduct of life ; too much to the 
teaching of rights, and too little to those obligations 
which are the invariable complements of rights. It 
fails to inculcate adequate understanding and serious 
sense of the duties of citizenship. It is inadequate on 
the side of vocational and well-thought-out special 
training for the nation's work in foreign trade and 
elsewhere. All this points to the need of greater 
centralization at Washington in the general direction 
of America's educational policy. And it inevitably 1 
points to a great increase in paternalism. 

In all these things something can be done through 
legislation and something through administration. 
Most of all must be done through the infusion of a 
new spirit, a new attention to national affairs, new 
aims and a new comradeship in the nation. Herein is 
the task of preparedness for our victory in the issue 
which the war has made so much clearer. In one 
year we are spending $20,000,000,000 on account of 
our part toward victory in the world issue. Can we 
not well afford to spend much for the victory in the 
recreation and betterment of our national life? 

Even while blessed with peace had we not enough 
to war upon in our own country, if we have any con- 
science about the promises of our democracy, to make 
it worth our while to plan efficiency, through pater- 
nalism and centralization — efficiency to make our na- 
tional life still better worth living, as well as to pro- 



152 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

tect it from foreign assault? The European war 
shows what democracies like Great Britain and France 
have had to do and have been able to do to achieve 
efficiency for a great national purpose. They con- 
centrate delegated power for quick decision. Their 
governments become in the highest degree representa- 
tive. They limit profits. They compel service. They 
take over services where necessary. They assume an 
intensely paternalistic care of the nation. Did we 
learn by their example? No; we, too, must needs 
wait to be taught by war. It is not war, but war's 
absolute demand for efficiency, that has driven Europe 
into frank paternalism and increased centralization. 
In America, where we are so backward in political 
and social thought, where we do not always act as if 
we believed, at heart, that the true interests of each 
and of all are the same, some of us were shocked 
at those European innovations. Thinking of material 
things, we began to discuss the need of meeting in 
commercial competition the efficiency to be looked for 
in Europe's centralized paternalism, enhanced and 
developed by the war. A "practical" people, we 
were shocked at paternalism while admitting its 
efficiency ! 

British institutions are pointed to as a gradual 
growth, with little conscious purpose in their build- 
ing. New forms and methods of government, like new 
religions, sometimes came about in spasms of reaction 



SOCIALIZATION 153 

against life as it had become. Neither method is 
suitable to the conditions of to-day. Modern life is 
" speeded up" to a terrific pace. Man has "made 
things hum ' ' verily. He cannot leave his Government 
the only thing at the mercy of gradual growth. His 
constructive genius must reorganize government so 
that it shall keep pace with the scale and speed of 
the rest of his life. To neglect this is to prepare the 
way for reform by spasm. And how infinitely dan- 
gerous and costly that would be in the vast and com- 
plicated society of to-day. 

American history has been a long, often uncon- 
scious, fight to put down excessive individualism. Be- 
fore the Civil War this individualism asserted itself 
chiefly by State groups and was ever jealous of any 
extension of care for national interests by the national 
Government. In recent decades the sheer demand 
for uniformity and efficiency, as well as the lure of 
the Federal treasury, has with startling rapidity seen 
the whole country turn to the national Government 
for aid and for regulation in nearly every field of 
human welfare. The political party which used to 
raise the banner of "States' rights" has joined the 
van of this irresistible movement to substitute na- 
tional for local government in all national concerns, 
whether the Constitution had looked forward to their 
Federal or to their State control. 

This is as it should be. The dual system of State 



154 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

and national regulation of really national affairs is 
obviously complicated, wasteful and inefficient as a 
system. Besides, no country is so densely populated 
with statesmen as to be able to fill with men of wis- 
dom, lofty character, intelligence and high education 
forty-eight large Legislatures, countless State, execu- 
tive and judicial offices and the innumerable offices of 
complex municipalities and of counties. It simply 
cannot be done. Our municipalities have been scan- 
dals of extravagance and bad service and our State 
Legislatures have so muddled matters of national 
interest that the people have turned in despair to the 
national Government. The supply of talent available 
for the national Government is cut down by the local 
demand. As one of our modern writers has intimated, 
a State Governor elected subject to recall on a defi- 
nite platform, and supplied with a few experts in 
law drafting would probably run a State more effi- 
ciently and certainly infinitely more economically 
than is done by the present elaborate State govern- 
ment. Such have been the corresponding results 
where a small commission has been substituted for 
an elaborate municipal government. 

The evolution, then, is toward the gradual decay of 
State government as a participant in national, as dis- 
tinguished from really local affairs. In business, when 
a machine no longer pays, it is scrapped. As the 
work of State government is cut down to purely local 



SOCIALIZATION 155 

concerns, the State machinery can be cut down and 
simplified. Evolution should be met half way with a 
plan. If we could take the wisest two dozen men in 
the country and lock them up like a jury for a few 
months they would doubtless come out with an ex- 
cellent plan. But to get that result through forty- 
eight Legislatures and a huge national Congress in a 
few years is a much more doubtful hope. Anyhow, 
centralization has arrived. The principle has at last 
won. The task now is to face the fact and to adapt 
our system to it. 

With the new nationalization of our Government 
and the concentration at Washington of the sovereign 
authority we must not fall into another error, an- 
other violation of the rules of efficiency. Already we 
are piling up vast buildings and a vast personnel 
With the centralization of authority and of legis- 
lation upon national affairs we must have a certain 
decentralization of administration. One of our old 
cries is the laudation of "government of laws not of 
men." Really we suffer from too many laws and not 
enough able administration. Legislation cannot go 
into every detail. It must vest discretion, as in the 
Interstate Commerce Commission and the increasing 
number of such bodies we have and shall require. The 
Federal reserve bank zones may have blazed the way 
for this administrative decentralization. In them we 
may find a clue suggesting such zones for the imping- 



156 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

ing of national administration upon the people in 
groups of States. The centers of such zones might 
become subcapitals of the nation, the centers of the 
Federal administrative and judiciary activities cor- 
responding to the surrounding States, the locations of 
the great Federal garrisons and training schools that 
are to come with universal military service, the sites 
of a few real universities. This new prestige would 
also tend to give the cities concerned a local leader- 
ship in learning, art, music, etc., so that in them 
might be concentrated a part of life which we have 
now spread so thin over the whole country that many 
of those who hunger for beautiful things must travel 
too far to find them in satisfactory quantity. 

Paternalism and centralization have arrived, in 
principle, and have come to stay. We may blink at 
them as horrid apparitions. We may rattle the dead 
bones of laissez faire theory and of "States' rights," 
but this is true. Here again it will be better to make 
a plan and to meet evolution half way, instead of 
trusting to gradual growth at the risk of political 
and social spasm. If we meant it when we said our 
Government was for the people, when we said its aim 
was "the greatest good of the greatest number," how 
can we dodge the conclusion that our welfare lies in 
paternalism? To the father of a family is delegated 
by custom the family's object of caring for the fam- 
ily, of existing for the greatest good of the family. 



SOCIALIZATION 157 

To the Government the body politic, which is the na- 
tion viewed as a family, delegates the similar object 
of its existence; that is, the care of itself, the nation 
and the greatest good of itself, the nation. The im- 
mense complexities of modern life, the inequalities of 
wealth and opportunity, a thousand things have 
made it impossible for the nation to care for itself and 
to achieve its greatest good effectively while acting 
only through individual or group agencies. The 
nation needs its own full power — that is, its Govern- 
ment — for those vast tasks. 



XIX 



NEW NATIONALISM 



Since the ideals of "liberty, equality and frater- 
nity' ' reverberated around the world, what with in- 
creased education, rapid communication and indus- 
trialism, the democratic idea, backed potentially with 
modern weapons, has become too strong to be longer 
threatened. Democracy has slain the dragon of op- 
pression. Now the giant democracy stands quivering 
in his strength wondering what to do next. He car- 
ries constitutions as a little shield lest in a moment 
of madness he turn and rend himself. Democracy 
must have very clear aims or else its appalling power 
will be used for mischief to itself. In the dangerous 
completeness of its liberty democracy holds the right 
to commit suicide. When modern democracy origi- 
nated its task was to protect the people against gov- 
ernmental oppression by a small part of them — a 
power extraneous to the masses. Now the task is 
rather to protect all the people from oppression by 
all the people — from an oppression that might be 

158 



NEW NATIONALISM 159 

heavier than that of oligarchy as the whole is greater 
than its part. For it is oppression by the selfish and 
indifferent mass of the people that is transmuted into 
oppression by economic and social group interests. 
The whole people have the power ; they must be held 
responsible for the effects of any failure to make full 
and wise use of their power. 

What worse oppression, too, than that which re- 
duces all ideals to the level of materialism ; that robs 
the nation of lofty leadership and enthrones medi- 
ocrity? With its original object gone, how shall de- 
mocracy justify itself if its cumbersome processes are 
allowed to hamper efficient administration, prompt 
justice, wise policy, noble national ideals and the best 
development of a finely happy people? The promise 
of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' ' means 
much here in America. But does it mean as much 
as it should? We go on interpreting it, in a modern 
world, according to the ancient theories of laissez faire 
still in vogue among those who think we still want 
"as little government as possible." What is "life" 
to the sick man who cannot pay a doctor or does not 
know where to find a good one? What is "happi- 
ness" to a laborer, whatever his wages, whose shanty 
is on an ash-heap, whose breath is factory stench, 
whose outlook is hideous devastation? What is "lib- 
erty" to the man for whom the nation finds no place 
in its mechanism of living? 



160 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

The French Court at Versailles failed to meet 
social and political evolution half way. Caught with- 
out a plan, it saw reform by social spasm. The pow- 
erful are slow to learn jiujitsu — the art of fighting by 
yielding scientifically. They are so tenacious of more 
than they have a moral right to that they risk and 
often lose all rather than help in making a plan to 
secure them their just dues. Quite aside from the 
war, capital has already had to yield to great taxes 
and to increasing regulation and restraint. Stricter 
regulation and such limitation of profits, except per- 
haps for the first years of new and beneficial enter- 
prises, are likely to outlast the war. The " rights' ' 
of both capital and labor must capitulate to the para- 
mount equities of the nation of which they are parts. 
What is, in each field, a proper number of hours of 
labor and what is a fair and adequate wage are ques- 
tions of the moral, mental and physical welfare of 
the people. They deeply concern the nation. They 
should not be left entirely to " collective bargaining," 
as if the State were disinterested. The moral, mental 
and physical welfare of its members is the chief con- 
cern of a family. Because the nation is a big fam- 
ily, why should it be expected to be indifferent to 
and aloof from those same concerns? On the con- 
trary, the moral, mental and physical welfare of the 
people is the people's, and, therefore, the State's most 
vital interest The national family does not want to 



NEW NATIONALISM 161 

take over every member's work, but it does not wish 
to conduct itself for the benefit of any group of 
spoiled children, whether of the capitalistic or of the 
labor group. 

People are naturally somewhat lazy and superficial 
and not very much given to thought beyond their 
more obvious personal concerns. In politics they are 
too often wandering sheep at the mercy of any shep- 
herd's siren whistle. The average man is not a great 
thinker about public affairs. An Oriental sage, in- 
specting western civilization in England, reported 
home of the jury system: "Wise men are few, we 
all know, yet these people intrust to the judgment of 
twelve men chosen almost at random the decision of 
the most difficult questions." Well, we should not 
exchange ours for oriental justice. All the same, our 
theoretical assumption of supreme wisdom and dili- 
gent attention to public affairs on the part of our 
nation of voters is a time-honored hypocrisy, and we 
all know it. One may admire the sincere idealism of 
those fanatics who think direct democracy would be 
a cure-all. One must condemn the hypocrisy of those 
who make the people's unexercised power an excuse 
for their own inaction in office. Our leaders' fre- 
quent slavish reflection of popular prejudice differs 
not in principle from the Roman provision of popu- 
lar games and feasts. It differs only in so far as the 
tastes of the masses have changed with the centuries. 



162 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

This fashion creates a vicious equilibrium, a ver- 
itable paralysis of the national will. Oftentimes the 
people are attending to their private affairs and 
thinking little or not at all of a problem of public 
policy; our government, both executive and legisla- 
tive, finds itself confronted with the distasteful duty 
of making a decision ; so it listens for public opinion. 
Ninety-nine per cent of the public may not be opin- 
ing at all on the subject, but may be leaving it all to 
" those fellows at Washington, ' ' or to the President. 
The spectacle is for all the world like the familiar 
sight, out shooting, of two dogs pointing one another, 
each assuming the other to have found the game. 
Literally direct government, were it not wholly im- 
possible, would be preferable to a perversion of rep- 
resentative government into government merely re- 
flective of popular indifference. In that is the evil 
of pure democracy and something more; for in pure 
democracy the people might awaken to some feeling 
of responsibility, whereas now they are often lulled 
to sleep by the theory that they are being represented, 
when they are really only being reflected. The na- 
tion cannot afford to be guided according to guesses 
at the opinion of people who are blissfully thinking 
of something else. Direct democracy, whether 
frankly so or through the perversion of the forms of 
representative government, could be successful only 
when the mass of citizens were supernaturally 



NEW NATIONALISM 163 

thoughtful, diligent, well informed, high-minded and 
wise in public affairs. And when that stage had been 
reached we should be so near the millennium that 
nearly all government would be superfluous and we 
could blossom out into an affable anarchy of universal 
unselfishness and perfection. 

As a predominantly Anglo-Saxon people we no 
doubt inherit the custom of appointing royal com- 
missions to sit leisurely while Rome burns and come 
honestly by part of the latter-day sluggishness of our 
political genius. The urgent task of material ex- 
ploitation of a new country has been another excuse. 
Our vast waves of the newer immigrations, who did 
not expect, in El Dorado, to find any obligations, are 
another factor. At all events, the slow muddling 
processes and the low efficiency of our Government are 
a sad microcosm of the political indifference of the 
public they reflect. 

Until men are all heroes, to get efficient government 
in a democracy water must be made to rise higher 
than its source. Representative government was to 
insure this, but it is not adequately doing so. The 
public must be awakened to the necessity and given 
better means to force the election of the best men 
and to compel the prompter carrying out of better 
measures. The people own this complex instrument 
of our institutions. They need to learn how to play 
upon it. 



164 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

The point is that we have made our aimless national 
life in peace-time and in its public aspect as stulti- 
fying as the millennium arrived would be. In our 
university athletics a hundred men overtrain, to the 
injury of many, while 5,000 sit degenerating for lack 
of exercise. So in our politics a few hundred men 
put out political cries or put popular labels on indif- 
ferent men or measures, while a hundred million per- 
sons are excluded from the game except just before 
elections. Surely there never was a country where 
public life was made so unattractive, where the han- 
dles to take hold of it were so inconvenient. The 
reference is to public life in the broad sense of gen- 
eral interest in and discussion of public questions; 
of a heart-warming policy of fellowship and partici- 
pation in government; of enthusiasm in great and 
common national aims. We have cross purposes, 
unthinking prejudice, selfish indifference, no adequate 
means of either information or inspiration. 

In this war between the forces of justice and right 
against the forces of ruthless injustice and wrong ; in 
the bitter international rivalries of the future ; in the 
national issues between equity and economic force, 
and in the future better and better working out of 
those issues the measure of a nation's strength is 
largely its spiritual solidarity and the quality and 
force of its spirit. A hundred million spirited peo- 
ple, however high and fine their spirit, may make a 



NEW NATIONALISM 165 

spiritless and therefore a weak nation if the aspira- 
tions of the individuals, that is, their spiritual forces, 
are too much dissipated in a thousand individual 
aims. To generate spiritual solidarity there must be 
set before the citizens certain aims which all may 
share ; a large part of the aspirations of all must be 
polarized in such fashion as to become the common 
national aspirations, the self-conscious national pur- 
pose. 

The German Government knew this and made 
propaganda of patriotism, national consciousness and 
national aims a large element in the education of the 
people, while it supplied a wonderful technical train- 
ing in order that the national spirit might find ex- 
pression in works. Universal military service sup- 
plied the crowning unification of the national spirit, 
while it subserved also national efficiency and af- 
forded the means, at least, of national safety. A com- 
mon aim, discipline and efficiency might have been the 
happy result: but, given the German character, the 
discipline was overdone. Instead of the high goal of 
real spiritual solidarity, there was evolved a disas- 
trous subserviency of intellect and spirit, a fatal de- 
pendence upon guidance by the Prussian ruling class. 
The German people's is the antithesis of our own sit- 
uation. Instead of a Government often listening in 
vain for a sound popular mandate, as with us, we 
have seen in Germany a people always listening for 



166 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

guidance, and getting many benefits, to be sure, in 
their internal material affairs, but getting orders also 
to conquer the world on the principle that might 
makes right — getting debauched, demoralized and 
barbarized until they have lost their spiritual value 
along with the respect of the civilized world. 

The Germans knew that spiritual solidarity, or the 
nearest equivalent, was necessary to national strength. 
We need not imitate their too-leveling excess, nor for 
an instant condone their cynical pragmatism nor 
their horrible and barbaric jettison of all moral stand- 
ards in the ruthless will to achieve power. But we 
may accept the fact that spiritual solidarity, concen- 
trated in a strong national will to some purpose, and 
some degree of discipline are conditions of national 
strength. Although far behind the Germans were the 
French, before this war, and still further were the 
English, in this matter of unanimity of aim, never- 
theless a thousand French or British, taken at ran- 
dom, would react in unison to certain sets of facts 
bearing upon the present actualities and the future 
of their countries. The spiritual solidarity of the 
Japanese, like their efficiency, reached a high pitch at 
the time of the Russo-Japanese war, and it is still pos- 
sessed by them to a marked degree, in spite of heavy 
drafts of western thought and consequent cleavages 
in opinion. A thousand Americans, picked at ran- 
dom and confronted with a question of American pol- 



NEW NATIONALISM 167 

icy, would not normally react to the same extent with 
the degree of unanimity that is desirable in a nation. 
To gain a unanimous reaction our orators have been 
wont to fall back upon some cry of the past — some 
cry often dangerous and unsound when applied to 
to-day's problems. Uniformity of reaction to a cer- 
tain number of sets of facts is a test of spiritual and 
intellectual solidarity. We are meeting it well while 
at war. A greater solidarity through an awakened 
national consciousness will be one of the war's best 
benefits to America. 

Given the American character, there is no fear of 
overdiscipline. Even if we were sure there would 
never be another war, we ought to have universal 
military service. We ought to put more uniformity, 
patriotism and sense of duty and of ideals into our 
educational system. Success and money must be re- 
stored to their proper place below virtue and service 
as objects of worship. And, above all, must we set 
before our eyes some definite national aims. 

Because Prussian aims are unconscionable, and 
Prussian modes of pursuing those aims are vile, it 
does not follow that aimlessness is good. When we 
see efficiency put to the service of crime or low aims 
we condemn the aims, not the efficiency. "What 
profiteth a man to gain the whole world if he lose his 
own soul" is true of ruthless militarism. It is true, 
too, of ruthless materialism. Because a strong Power 



168 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

has run amuck it does not follow that preparedness 
and universal service are bad. Is the athletic train- 
ing of the individual bad because a strong man, if a 
villain, will be more dangerous for his strength? 

Spiritual solidarity and national consciousness in 
the service of clear national aims will carry America 
to victory in this war. They are equally needed to 
carry us to victory in the task of our new national- 
ism, to vindicate democracy by successfully meeting 
the issue between social equity and justice and eco- 
nomic force, between constructive action and ruthless 
indifference in the ordinary problems common to all 
countries. Some nations have had to travel, or still 
have to travel, the long road to democratic power and 
to the habit of its orderly exercise. Fortunate in hav- 
ing started with those blessings, America's new pre- 
paredness must be directed to see to it that we shall 
really enjoy them — to see to it that the new solidarity, 
the new spirit and aim, the new patriotism and the 
more serious and unselfish understanding aroused by 
the war shall be just as effective in the issues of 
peace. 

The war has brought America a glorious oppor- 
tunity to find herself and to school herself. In nor- 
mal times everyday business, conventionality, custom 
and prejudice divert the gaze from stark truth. The 
well-to-do, the respectable, the comfortable and the 
indolent "let well enough alone," even if it be not 



NEW NATIONALISM 169 

very well. The mind and heart of the nation, now 
risen to grasp the meaning of the war, arc attuned 
to great things. The camouflage of habit falls away. 
Questions left as somehow settled will now stand forth 
fresh, to be settled better in the light of the nation's 
new spirit. Progress and reforms that might have 
had to wait for generations are now within grasp. 
What the politician thought "unpractical" has be- 
come attainable to statesmanship. Will America ride 
forward on this wave? Shall we avail of this glori- 
ous opportunity? Timid, mistrustful leadership and 
popular indifference are the familiar banes of democ- 
racy in peace as well as at war. The new era calls for 
a vast work of preparedness for peace as well as for 
war by patriotic and intelligent citizens. 

In recent years all over the United States men of 
good-will and intelligence, but almost ineffective in 
the political life of the nation, have sat in groups and 
discussed and discussed and parted after hours, 
agreed that the country was going wrong in various 
respects and equally agreed that they did not know 
what was to be done about it. Such discussion was 
a sort of intellectual exercise. Many, grown tired of 
these squirrel- journeys in the revolving cage of the 
tentative through boredom or cynicism would eschew 
all discussion of politics. Only let the rain of pros- 
perity fill their reservoirs, they would never look sky- 
ward unless drought threatened. If their own money- 



170 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

bags were menaced they would think of political ac- 
tion; otherwise not. And this whether the bags con- 
tain good wages or huge incomes. The vagueness of 
these blind-alley conversations that lead nowhere has 
been often enough characteristic of newspaper discus- 
sion and of the stately harmony of journals of opin- 
ion ; usually, too, of political platforms, or at least of 
the part of them that anyone believes. The meet- 
ings of our innumerable conventions, congresses, 
leagues and associations too often duplicate each oth- 
er's work and duplicate the inconclusiveness of each 
other's programmes of action. It is like the family 
whose motto was, "Let us discuss it by all means, 
but for heaven's sake don't let's decide anything." 
The mind of the millions is not penetrated as deeply 
or continuously as is required for the safety and suc- 
cess of democracy. Possibly part of the trouble is 
that the wisest are reluctant to guess aloud at the 
solutions of confessedly most difficult problems. They 
hate to risk their reputations for being right, and 
hold to a policy of conservation of unnatural infal- 
libility! 

The sincere reformer of narrow and shallow views ; 
he who would exchange obscurity for a flash in the 
limelight cheaply at the risk of any error; he who 
speaks for a class interest with a modest cloak of pre- 
tension to care for the national welfare ; and the poli- 
tician who guesses at a popular hobby to ride to vie- 



NEW NATIONALISM 171 

tory — these are those who have too often given us our 
definite political cries. All this is of so little value 
to any real solution of our problems that it leaves us 
floundering in the endless process of tentative discus- 
sion. Now the groups of men all over the country 
who futilely tell one another about the drift of the 
nation in certain directions in recent years are singu- 
larly agreed as to the evils when they speak frankly 
in private conversations. They will even listen with 
sympathy to radical specific suggestions when pri- 
vately put before them. The same men at banquets 
will applaud all the old artificial or obsolete cries. 
We have lived in a deafening chorus of unreflecting 
praise of our "glorious institutions." Yet the very 
choristers, in the duets of private conversation, are 
often found to be somewhat doubtful of the promise 
of our institutions unless we give them more atten- 
tion 5 alarmed at our bungling inefficiency ; sad at the 
trend we have been allowing our civilization to take; 
skeptical of the certainty of hereafter successfully 
solving our problems under our form of government 
as it has grown, through public indifference, to work 
in practice. 

Why should these hundreds of thousands of men 
of honesty, intelligence and patriotism sit idly by, 
seeing the evils, condemning them privately, accepting 
them publicly? Why should they be so ineffective in 
shaping the destiny of tlieir country? How can 



172 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

their brains and patriotism and honesty be made 
active for good? There is good reason to hope that 
there could be found common ground for their agree- 
ment upon the essentials of public policy; that their 
opinion could be galvanized and amalgamated with a 
real and articulate public opinion, which we generally 
have not in time of peace in this country, although we 
are forever talking about it. 

Another respect in which the moral and intellectual 
vitality of the nation's political life is atrophied is in 
the lingering isolation of the South in an idea-tight 
compartment. Even when one recalls the sudden en- 
franchisement of ignorant ex-slaves and the " carpet- 
baggers " and " reconstruction, ' ' one can scarcely 
still condone this. The greed of the southern planter 
gave us the negro question ; the greed of the northern 
manufacturer, demanding cheap labor, has helped 
nearly to swamp our nationality by reckless and ex- 
cessive immigration. The South is one of our most 
purely American sections. The nation can ill afford 
to have the brains and character of the white South 
still shackled to a dead issue — the negro question — 
in party political questions of national import. The 
free thought and feelings of the American South 
must be mobilized to the unprejudiced service of the 
nation's great problems, free from the fascination of 
obsolete shibboleths. 

To gain all those things needed to make American 



NEW NATIONALISM 173 

democracy and American national life a brilliant 
success and to insure victory in war aims and in peace 
aims, in the international issue and in the national 
issue, the absolute and fundamental need is the in- 
spiration and the schooling of the whole nation in 
patriotism and in political thought. For the excel- 
lent and consolidated spirit in which the war is being 
met to-day a vast debt is due the tireless and intelli- 
gent propaganda of our various patriotic societies in 
the work of bringing home to the people the facts of 
the war, which only needed to be known in order that 
public opinion should be molded for war purposes to 
the unselfish support of a righteous cause. In praise 
of this work the highest place seems to be due the 
National Security League. 

Not one whit less for preparedness to meet the work 
of peace, the issue upon which hangs the fate of 
democracy, is such a campaign of education required. 
Even in this work, whether in time of war or of peace, 
the curse of excessive individualism is seen. If an 
amount of energy equal to that being spent to-day by 
existing organizations now seeking the national good, 
but dissipating their efforts in individual fields, could 
be put behind one consolidated undertaking to spread 
true discussion of national questions and energetic 
political action thereon in the light only of sincere 
conclusions, the country could be given the lesson in 
patriotism and politics it so sorely needs. How else 



174 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

than by some great organized effort can a coherent 
public opinion be evolved and maintained, can intel- 
ligible national aims be crystallized, can the demand 
for wise policies ably carried out be made effective? 
How else can the American democracy be rescued 
from oppression by the indifference of the American 
people? No democracy can succeed unless a great 
mass of the people are enlightened upon and inter- 
ested and active in their public life. 

In combining their efforts under a joint direction 
the existing patriotic societies could cover the whole 
country with a network of channels of information 
and foci of interest in national affairs. In this would 
be real work of permanent usefulness for all those 
who feel that they are not doing enough for their 
country at war. The battle for right in the national 
is as real as that in the international war. Now is 
the time for preparedness for both. 

In preparedness for war the American people have 
done themselves honor in a glorious unanimity of aim. 
In preparedness for the great struggle that is com- 
ing to us in the shadow of the war, we must, of 
course, expect cleavages of opinion. The point is 
that we should not exaggerate those cleavages. It 
matters not at all in result, for example, whether 
socialism is humanized or whether individualism is 
socialized. Either ideal must compromise liberally 
with the hard facts of human nature and human ex- 



NEW NATIONALISM 175 

perience. It is for those who are wise to combat 
opinionated theory of both radical and " stand-pat' ' 
schools, to map out a course which shall gradually 
mitigate the rigors of the modern economic and social 
situation without destroying the indispensable incen- 
tives to individual human effort. Feudalism passed; 
individualism ran riot. Now should come an era of 
economic efficiency and social justice, through a 
wisely measured paternalism and centralization. If 
we do not prepare intelligently we shall drift dan- 
gerously. 



A BRITISH PROGRAMME 

Second to, but along with and after, the war, the 
great task before the American people is to as- 
sure our national progress through wise and conscious 
evolution instead of through disastrous bungling drift 
or serious error. Hidebound ultra-conservatives and 
wildly unsound radicals form two extreme groups 
capable of making dangerously difficult that ordered 
progress to which our splendid institutions so fortu- 
nately are adapted to respond. Between those ex- 
tremes are the mass of the nation. If "the tariff 
should be revised by its friends," as used to be said, 
how much more must the task of formulating the 
industrial, social and political policies which shall 
hold America safe in this era of accelerated change 
be an obligation of all patriotic citizens! Here is a 
plea to which the determined standpatter and the 
man who does not think himself very directly affected 
should alike give heed. Signs are not wanting that 
capitalists, merchants, traders, manufacturers and 
others most directly concerned are increasingly open- 

176 



A BRITISH PROGRAMME 177 

ing their minds and their hearts to the need to re- 
spond to the changing times. A crude policy of 
"More, more!" on the part of labor and of "Only 
what you can force from me!" on the part of capital 
is obsolete and must give place to something more 
scientific and more sympathetic. Competition must 
yield more to co-operation. Laissez faire must yield 
more to paternalism. It is for the American people, 
which includes both "capital" and "labor," and for 
that majority of the American people not usually 
classed with but liable to be the victim of either to 
study this perennial but now unusually urgent ques- 
tion. 

For the convenience of the happily increasing num- 
ber of citizens who realize their civic and patriotic 
responsibilities in this grave matter it is worth while 
to attempt some analysis and criticism, from the point 
of view of its suggestive relation to American condi- 
tions, of a very interesting document that has recently 
come out of "the old country." It is the tentative 
draft programme of reconstruction prepared by its 
sub-committee for submission to the Labor party of 
Great Britain. At the outset the authors of the docu- 
ment voice their resolve "to look at the problem as a 
whole," "to make clear what it is we (they) wish to 
construct" and to see to it that "detailed practical 
proposals proceed from definitely held principles." 
We are so accustomed in this country to specious po- 



178 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

litical platforms, narrow dogmatizing, vague rantings 
or idealistic aspirations and deductions conveniently 
disdainful of hard practical fact — all in the arena of 
a dangerously indifferent public opinion — that the 
high resolve to be broad in view, to be specific and to 
be practically sound must evoke our sincere admira- 
tion, even if the authors of the programme have not 
always been able to live up to it. 

These representatives of British labor, we are told, 
see in the world war "the culmination and collapse of 
a distinctive industrial civilization, which the work- 
ers will not seek to reconstruct. ' ' The problem, as 
they see it, is to assure that the British nation shall 
not "slip into ruin, ,, but "shall progress into higher 
forms of organization. ' ' British labor as a party, 
whether in office or in opposition, is to favor, and to 
favor only, such measures as it deems consistent with 
the reconstructed society it desires to see arise. Here 
is recognition of a sound principle of social evolution 
and of the sound political principle, too commonly 
neglected here, of legislation in conformity to a gen- 
eral policy instead of in detached and opportunistic 
attention to specific matters. We are far away and 
still untouched, in comparison with our allies, by the 
war. They have lived nearly four years in inti- 
macy with its horrors. Small wonder, then, if the 
present undoubted generating of need for an unusual 
amount of social and economic adjustment appears to 



A BRITISH PROGRAMME 179 

us as meaning one of the leaps by which a really or- 
derly evolution often works, and to some of our Brit- 
ish kinsmen as marking, if not the end of a civilization, 
at least an almost catastrophic change. Frankly, it 
may be admitted that the decisive power thrust upon 
labor and the high wages assured it by the war have 
expanded both its conscious and recognized position 
and its material desires. Then, too, that most powerful 
explosive which might be called Utopian Democratic 
Theory, and which has been so lavishly used in the 
war, has necessarily had some effect even upon the 
sober British mind. 

Let us examine the general principles of the ideal 
of reconstruction set forth and of the proposed means 
of approach to that ideal. The document says: "The 
individualist system of capitalist production, based on 
the private ownership and competitive administration 
of land and capital, with its reckless ' profiteering ' 
and wage slavery; with its glorification of the un- 
hampered struggle for the means of life and its hypo- 
critical pretense of the 'survival of the fittest'; with 
the monstrous inequality of circumstances which it 
produces and the degradation and brutalization, both 
moral and spiritual, resulting therefrom, may, we 
hope, indeed have received a death blow. With it 
must go the political system and ideas in which ft 
naturally found expression * * * we must in- 
sure that what is presently to be built up is a new 



180 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

social order, based not on fighting, but on fraternity ; 
not on the competitive struggle for the means of bare 
life, but on a deliberately planned co-operation in 
production and distribution for the benefit of all who 
participate by hand or by brain; not on the utmost 
possible inequality of riches, but on a systematic ap- 
proach toward a healthy equality of material circum- 
stances for every person born into the world ; not on 
an enforced dominion over subject nations, subject 
races, subject colonies, subject classes or a subject 
sex, but in industry as well as in government, on that 
equal freedom, that general consciousness of consent 
and that widest possible participation in power, both 
economic and political, which is characteristic of 
democracy. ' ' 

With evident consciousness of the drastic changes 
that must condition anything ultimately approaching 
the vision set forth as a social ideal, it is remarked 
that " to-day no man dares to say that anything is 
impracticable"; but the tenor of the document gives 
indications again and again of a common-sense realiza- 
tion that the real and the ideal are separate and 
distinct and that gradual, although much faster, 
amelioration is the true goal of effort and is all that 
practical men look for. 

"We may pass over those portions of the programme 
which relate to existing or desired legislation in de- 
tails determined by actual British conditions. Nor 



A BRITISH PROGRAMME 181 

need we examine here the language in which is em- 
phasized, with a forethought that should be imitated 
in our own country, the necessity to prepare in ad- 
vance a broad plan for the demobilization of the forces 
and their return to civil occupation after the war. 
We are concerned rather with getting a picture of the 
ideal in view and of the principles upon which it is 
proposed to pursue that ideal. A body of law is to 
secure to all members of the community and at all 
times "all the requisites of healthy life and worthy 
citizenship/ ' and "at least the prescribed minimum 
of leisure, health, education and subsistence. ' ' Ef- 
fort will be made to give to the individual "a situa- 
tion in accordance with his capacity/ ' The Govern- 
ment will be expected to prevent the standard rates 
of wages from suffering reduction "relatively to the 
contemporary cost of living.' ' It is to be an obliga- 
tion of the Government "to find for every willing 
worker, whether by hand or by brain, productive work 
at standard rates.' ' This is to be done by the Gov- 
ernment instituting national public works when 
necessary in times of threatened unemployment. 
"Wherever practicable, the eight-hour day six days a 
week is to be the standard. In any case where the 
Government shall have failed to provide against un- 
employment, it must provide any man or woman af- 
fected "with adequate maintenance, either with such 
arrangements for honorable employment or with 



182 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

such useful training as may be found practicable, 
according to age, health and previous occupation. ' ' 
Insurance is to be subsidized and largely taken over 
by the Government. "Only on the basis of a univer- 
sal application of the policy of the national minimum, 
affording complete security against destitution, in 
sickness and health, in good times and bad alike, to 
every member of the community can any worthy so- 
cial order be built up." And the unemployed are 
never to be driven to "anything so obsolete and dis- 
credited' ' as private charity or old-fashioned poor 
laws. 

Paternalistic legislation to improve the conditions 
of life has advanced so much further in Great Britain 
and elsewhere than it has in the United States that 
the principle of that group of social matters set down 
under the heading of a * ' national minimum ' ' is passed 
by as hardly contentious in principle. It is in its 
demand for "the full and genuine adoption of the 
principle of democracy' ' that the Labor party seeks 
specially to differentiate itself from all others — with 
how complete or incomplete success we can better at- 
tempt to examine later on. The "Labor party insists 
on democracy in industry as well as in government. 
It demands the progressive elimination from the con- 
trol of industry of the private capitalist, individual 
or joint-stock, and the setting free of all who work, 
whether by hand or by brain, for the service of the 



A BRITISH PROGRAMME 183 

community, and of the community only. And the 
Labor party refuses absolutely to believe that the 
British people will permanently tolerate any recon- 
struction or perpetuation of the disorganization, 
waste and inefficiency involved in the abandonment 
of British industry to a jostling crowd of separate 
private employers, with their minds bent, not on the 
service of the community, but — by the very law of 
their being — only on the utmost possible profiteering. 
What the nation needs is undoubtedly a great bound 
onward in its aggregate productivity. But this can- 
not be secured merely by pressing the manual work- 
ers to more strenuous toil, or even by encouraging the 
captains of industry to a less wasteful organization 
of their several enterprises on a profit-making basis. 
What the Labor party looks to is a genuinely scien- 
tific reorganization of the nation's industry, no 
longer deflected by individual profiteering, on the 
basis of the common ownership of the means of pro- 
duction ; the equitable sharing of the proceeds among 
all who participate in any capacity and only among 
these, and the adoption, in particular services and 
occupations, of those systems and methods of adminis- 
tration and control that may be found, in practice, 
best to promote the public interest. ,, 

"The Labor party stands not merely for the prin- 
ciple of the common ownership of the nation's land, 
to be applied as suitable opportunities occur, but also, 



184 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTlK 

specifically, for the immediate nationalization of rail- 
ways, mines and the production of electrical power 
# * * and for the national ownership and admin- 
istration of the railways and canals'' * * * along 
with ' ' harbors and roads and the posts and telegraphs 
— not to say also the great lines of steamships which 
could at once be owned, if not immediately directly 
managed in detail, by the Government — in a united 
national service of communication and transport; to 
be worked, unhampered by capitalist, private or 
purely local interests (and with a steadily increasing 
participation of the organized workers in the man- 
agement, both central and local), exclusively for the 
common good." Another demand is for the immedi- 
ate nationalization of mines, the extraction of coal and 
iron ore and the retail distribution of coal to be car- 
ried on as national and municipal public services, 
with fixed prices for the product. 

" Other main industries, especially those now be- 
coming monopolized, should be nationalized as oppor- 
tunity offers. Moreover, the Labor party holds that 
the municipalities should not confine their activities 
to the necessarily costly services of education, sani- 
tation and police ; nor yet rest content with acquiring 
control of the local water, gas, electricity and tram- 
ways; but that every facility should be afforded to 
them to acquire (easily, quickly and cheaply) all the 
land they require, and to extend their enterprises in 



A BRITISH PROGRAMME 185 

housing and town planning, parks and public libra- 
ries, the provision of music and the organization of 
recreation ; and also to undertake, beside the retailing 
of coal, other services of common utility, particularly 
the local supply of milk, wherever this is not already 
fully organized by a co-operative society." 

Such a vast transition to communism or State so- 
cialism in all these matters is sought in constructive 
political action, with modern disdain of the discred- 
ited ideas of class-war Marxian socialism, of the de- 
structive methods of syndicalism and of the "malice- 
aforethought ' ' frame of mind of the I. W. W. The 
plea is for open-minded scientific adjustment, for 
comradeship in citizenship, for co-operation. The 
manifesto as a whole shows common-sense realization 
that all this cannot come at a leap, for it appeals for 
protective measures whose applicability presupposes a 
necessary continuance of much of the old order. 
Whether or not one can concur in the whole pro- 
gramme as sufficiently in accord with human nature 
truly to subserve the welfare of man, one can feel 
pride that it is a political party of the English-speak- 
ing race that has spoken so unusually soberly and in 
such unusually good spirit of these profoundest and 
most difficult questions. 

Under the eyes of the whole world the most indi- 
vidualistic nations, driven by war's life-and-death 
demand for corporate efficienc3 r , have resorted to de- 



186 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

grees of combination, centralization, disciplined co-op- 
eration and paternalistic government control far be- 
yond their traditional polity. The efficiency of these 
things is on trial with prospect of vindication. Nat- 
urally the fact has given vast stimulus to those tend- 
encies, as we see exampled in this sweep toward State 
socialism advocated by the committee of the British 
Labor party. They think that "the people will be 
extremely foolish if they ever allow their indispen- 
sable industries to slip back into unfettered control of 
private capitalists. ' ' 

It is upon financial policy that the authors of the 
programme anticipate the sharpest political division, 
and upon this they claim to stand for the interests 
of four-fifths of their nation. Let them speak for 
themselves : 

"The Labor party stands for such a system of 
taxation as will yield all the necessary revenue to the 
Government without encroaching on the prescribed 
national minimum standard of life of any family 
whatsoever, without hampering production or discour- 
aging any useful personal effort and with the nearest 
possible approximation to equality of sacrifice. We 
definitely repudiate all proposals for a protective 
tariff. * • * We shall strenuously oppose any 
taxation, of whatever kind, which would increase the 
price of food or of any other necessity of life. We 
hold that indirect taxation on commodities, whether 



A BRITISH PROGRAMME 187 

by customs or excise, should be strictly limited to lux- 
uries. • • • "We are at one with the manufac- 
turer, the farmer and the trader in objecting to taxes 
interfering with production or commerce, or hamper- 
ing transport and communication. 

"For the raising of the greater part of the revenue 
now required the Labor party looks to the direct taxa- 
tion of the incomes above the necessary cost of family 
maintenance, and, for the requisite effort to pay off 
the national debt, to the direct taxation of private 
fortunes, both during life and at death. The income 
tax and supertax ought at once to be thoroughly re- 
formed in assessment and collection, in abatements 
and allowances and in graduation and differentiation, 
so as to levy the required total sum in such a way as 
to make the real sacrifice of all the taxpayers as 
nearly as possible equal. This would involve assess- 
ment by families instead of by individual persons, so 
that the burden is alleviated in proportion to the 
number of persons to be maintained. It would in- 
volve the raising of the present unduly low minimum 
income assessable to the tax and the lightening of the 
present unfair burden on the great mass of profes- 
sional and small trading classes by a new scale of 
graduation, rising from a penny in the pound on the 
smallest assessable income up to sixteen or even nine- 
teen shillings in the pound on the highest income of 
the millionaires. The excess-profits tax might well 



188 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

be retained in appropriate form. * * # The 
steadily rising unearned increment of urban and 
mineral land ought, by an appropriate direct taxa- 
tion of land values, to be wholly brought into the pub- 
lic exchequer. At the same time, for the service and 
redemption of the national debt, the death duties 
ought to be regraduated, much more strictly collected 
and greatly increased. # * * In this matter we 
need, in fact, completely to reverse our point of view, 
and to rearrange the whole taxation of inheritance 
from the standpoint of asking what is the maximum 
amount that any rich man should be permitted at 
death to divert, by his will, from the national ex- 
chequer, which should normally be the heir to all pri- 
vate riches in excess of a quite moderate amount by 
way of family provision. But all this will not suf- 
fice. It will be imperative at the earliest possible mo- 
ment to free the nation from at any rate the greater 
part of its new load of interest-bearing debt for loans 
which ought to have been levied as taxation ; and the 
Labor party stands for a special capital levy to pay 
off, if not the whole, a very substantial part of the 
entire national debt — a capital levy chargeable like 
the death duties on all property, but (in order to 
secure approximate equality of sacrifice) with exemp- 
tions of the smallest savings, and for the rest at 
rates very steeply graduated so as to take only a 
small contribution from the little people and a 



A BRITISH PROGRAMME 189 

very much larger percentage from the millionaires. ' ' 
Turning to the matter of the surplus national 
wealth, " which ought by now to have made this 
Britain of ours immune from class poverty or from 
any widespread destitution ' ' — complaint is made that 
it has been too greatly "absorbed by individual pro- 
prietors" and too much devoted to "the senseless lux- 
ury of an idle-rich class. " The Labor party aims at 
"the future appropriation of the surplus, not to the 
enlargement of any individual fortune, but to the 
common good. 

"It is from this constantly arising surplus (to be 
secured, on the one hand, by nationalization and 
municipalization and, on the other, by the steeply 
graduated taxation of private income and riches) 
that will have to be found the new capital which the 
community day by day needs for the perpetual im- 
provement and increase of its various enterprises, for 
which we shall decline to be dependent on the usury- 
exacting financiers. It is from the same source that 
has to be defrayed the public provision for the sick 
and infirm of all kinds (including that for maternity 
and infancy), which is still so scandalously insuffi- 
cient; for the aged and those prematurely incapaci- 
tated by accident or disease, now in many ways so 
imperfectly cared for ; for the education alike of chil- 
dren, of adolescents and of adults, in which the Labor 
party demands a genuine equality of opportunity, 



190 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

overcoming all differences of material circumstances; 
and for the organization of public improvements of 
all kinds, including the brightening of the lives of 
those now condemned to almost ceaseless toil, and a 
great development of the means of recreation. From 
the same source must come the greatly increased pub- 
lic provision that the Labor party will insist on being 
made for scientific investigation and original research, 
in every branch of knowledge, not to say also for the 
promotion of music, literature and fine arts, which 
have been under capitalism so greatly neglected, and 
upon which, so the Labor party holds, any real devel- 
opment of civilization fundamentally depends. So- 
ciety, like the individual, does not live by bread alone 
— does not exist only for perpetual wealth production. 
It is in the proposal for this appropriation of every 
surplus for the common good — in the vision of its 
resolute use for the building up of the community as 
a whole instead of for the magnification of individual 
fortunes — that the Labor party, as the party of the 
producers by hand or by brain, most distinctively 
marks itself off from the older political parties, stand- 
ing, as these do, essentially for the maintenance, un- 
impaired, of the perpetual private mortgage upon the 
annual production of the nation that is involved in 
the individual ownership of land and capital." 

The document under consideration is too long and 
too pithy to lend itself to an epitome at the same time 



A BRITISH PROGRAMME 191 

at all complete and at all short. Upon it, of course, 
are traces of the dreaming theorist and of the class- 
conscious materialist. Both in philosophy and in fair- 
ness, it is vulnerable enough. With the best inten- 
tions, it does not quite achieve that intellectual integ- 
rity always so hardly attainable by the partisan. But 
it is, in this nature, the work of partisans and of con- 
vinced protagonists of one school of thought. It is 
admirable in doing homage to science, even if it may 
not always reflect sufficient attention to the psychology 
of man. It is admirable in setting for itself a stand- 
ard of open-mindedness which it would be rather more 
than human if it should quite attain. And it has the 
merit of definiteness. It does set up the judicial 
standard, not the self-seeking class standard; the 
standard of political, social and economic science, not 
that of sentimentality and vague idealism. It invites 
criticism by those criteria. If not a programme imme- 
diately or undoubtedly practicable, it ably marks out a 
conception of the road to a national betterment at 
which America must equally aim. Even as a mere 
index of grave questions which this country, too, has 
to face this remarkable document is worthy the study 
of thoughtful Americans. 

So much for the picture of social reconstruction 
which will be offered to the British Labor party as a 
whole. But the framework of government and inter- 
national relations also receive attention. Some of the 



192 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

views expressed on those matters may be touched 
briefly. They will be better appreciated, perhaps, if 
we may assume the authors of this programme to be 
associated with the Henderson wing of the Labor 
party, whose views have been appraised as rather more 
international, socialistic and Utopian than those of the 
rank and file. What, for example, would the heroic 
sailors of the Seamen's Union say to the offhand dis- 
missal of possible boycott of the German people who 
have been murdering their members for these years? 
What will practical men everywhere say to the bland 
waving aside of a league of like-minded nations to 
guard civilization, when a universal league of right- 
eousness is still so problematical 1 Over dogmatic, too, 
in the American view, is the casual condemnation of a 
two-chamber legislature, since we know that two heads 
are wiser than one ; and of tariff protection, since we 
know the whole world cannot to-morrow have the 
same standard of life. In foreign affairs and in the 
framework of government, that powerful explosive 
called Utopian Democratic Theory must surely be 
handled with care. If we indulge in premature 
dreams of an international Utopia, we may wake up 
to find ourselves no longer allowed to work for our 
national ones. Wise, constructive progress in democ- 
racy at home by all means; but not too much inter- 
national sentimentality if the Prussian menace is to 
disappear and if Anglo-American civilization is to be 
safe in this cold world of international relations. 



XXI 

HUMAN NATURE AND SOCIAL THEORY 

The working out of the destiny of mankind in ac- 
cordance with great laws is a field of work which we 
all flatter ourselves with the belief that the Creator 
concerns Himself. A French mathematician has 
amused himself with raising the delightfully whimsi- 
cal but appalling question whether there may be an 
evolution of natural laws themselves; but we turn 
from so hopeless a hypothesis and we rightly call them 
immutable. When we enter ourselves that same field 
of effort and attempt conscious co-operation, it be- 
hooves us above all to study the laws of our being as 
deducible from science and from history. It behooves 
us, too, to approach with diffidence, deliberation and 
reverence for the task. A glance through the telescope 
shows yawning depths of illimitable space beyond 
millions of other worlds. The heart is devastated with 
the feeling of man's nothingness. The microscope 
shows us myriad lives in one drop of liquid. In in- 
finite space filled with infinitesimal complexity, gov- 

193 



194 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

erned, like himself, by laws he so imperfectly knows, 
stands man with the glorious courage to live, to strug- 
gle and to demand a conscious part in his destiny. 
Philosophy, science and history have much to say to 
chasten the cocksure radical and to awaken the slum- 
bering conservative. The mold of how many cen- 
turies is on the plans of Plato's Republic? Why are 
those thousands of cubicles in which the patrician and 
the peasant of China competed on even terms for the 
career of high office in the State to-day abandoned 
brick ruins for the curious to gaze upon? How little 
novelty in our advanced ideas or in our means to seek 
their fulfillment! And why? Because of the scarcely 
changing nature of man. In general, his brave strug- 
gle arises out of his egoism — whether it be that of the 
hero seeking holiness, the girl wanting a finer hat than 
her sister's, or the sluggard seeking mere comfort. 
The human effort to which progress is due has arisen 
from three stimuli — the necessity to work in order to 
live, the necessity to work harder in order to live bet- 
ter, and the ego's hunger for distinction. Man loves 
ease and comfort; he is not too fond of work for 
work's sake; he shuns hard thinking; he dislikes too 
much discipline; he loves variety and diversion, but 
clings to habit; he prefers the immediate to the re- 
mote. A fat man with mug of ale, pipe and easy 
chair, dreaming his heroics, chatting with his pals and 
dozing at ease is not a bad picture of a large part of 



HUMAN NATURE: SOCIAL THEORY 195 

every man's sense of good. But it is the potential 
ego that makes this placidity agreeable. Without it, 
without individual distinction, Heaven itself, in the 
impersonal form of the Buddhist's Nirvana, leaves us 
cold. We wish something more than to be indistin- 
guishable globules in a limitless soup of felicity. 

Louis XIV said, "L'etat c'est moi." With complete 
socialism we might say, "We are the State." But 
would any one enjoy being an equal one-hundred- 
millionth part even in the greatest earthly institution 
any more than a happy atom, without individuality, 
in a celestial state? Only those decent persons who, 
to the glaring disgrace of our civilization, need fear 
the lack of even a passable livelihood would accept 
that role at the obvious sacrifice of liberty, of oppor- 
tunity and of potential play for the individual ego 
which gives life its value. Too rashly reduce the 
stimuli of necessity, of the desire for a better life and 
the desire for distinction and then idleness, apathy, 
decreased production, misery and cessation of progress 
loom as the logical results. In Russia, where, for the 
moment, realization of these real dangers seems 
eclipsed by the specious doctrines of a minority, their 
followers have been cynically characterized as "sol- 
diers who do not fight, workmen who do not work and 
peasants who do not plow." And so it will be wher- 
ever human nature is deprived of its natural incen- 
tives to worthy action. 



196 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

In these days of confusion the same voices cry for 
internationalism and " self -determination " ; for lib- 
erty and for socialism. Pure anarchy is the govern- 
ment of the millennium. Doubtless the angels are 
worthy of it. The apothesis of " self -determination, ' ' 
whether international or municipal, is anarchy. Who 
would assert that either individual or nation was 
ready for it? Pure socialism and real international- 
ism are the very antitheses of freedom, national and 
individual. Who would say that man, as individual or 
as citizen, was ready for so much bondage, so much 
loss of his ego, so very, very much discipline as either 
would involve? "The first condition of democracy is 
effective personal freedom," say spokesmen of ths 
British Labor party — and then proceed far in advo- 
cacy of socialism and internationalism. Such are the 
fireworks of the new explosive, Utopian Democratic 
Theory! Out of new thought and old fact the truth 
must be sought. 

The war may well make peace and a quiet life seem 
just now a sufficiently inspiring ideal ; but the spirit 
of man will, as ever, ask more. The race that built 
the British Empire and gave its character to this na- 
tion of ours would not long be content in the dull 
humdrum of complete socialism. No virile race would 
endure a system designed wholly as a feather-bed for 
mediocrity. For the sum of progress we well know 
that it is quite as necessary to prevent the destruction 



HUMAN NATURE: SOCIAL THEORY 197 

of opportunity or its monopolization by mediocrity 
(in the name of democracy) as it is important to as- 
sure fair opportunity to the talent of all men. Prus- 
sianization at the hands of an autocracy of a prole- 
tarian minority (again in the name of democracy) 
would be quite as incompatible with liberty as Prus- 
sian! zation by autocracy of any other minority — and 
would be in many ways even more fatal to progress. 
But enough touching the easy reductio ad absurdum 
of complete socialism. Our professional radicals here, 
as elsewhere, need sobering; but they are few. That 
group of Socialists from which John Spargo and other 
thoughtful patriotic men seceded appears to take its 
tone (aside from war influences) chiefly from foreign- 
ers who seem to have come to America with a sort of 
"hangover" from embittered sickness with European 
conditions, and whom we have reprehensibly allowed 
to oppress one another here. The I. W. W. are not 
to be dismissed as a mere sign of depravity, but are 
to be examined, too, as a nasty symptom of something 
wrong in our civilization of to-day. The wild radical 
doubtless has his use in the "wondrous way" of the 
scheme of things. One may admit the instrumentality 
without admiring the instrument. To him is the 
voice ; to the rest of our citizenship is the work of re- 
form. Our pressing need is not so much to chide our 
extreme radicals, who are a little percentage of the 
population; but is rather the heavy task of arousing 



198 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

the too indifferent majority and the ultra-conserva- 
tive to the undeniable need of faster social improve- 
ment involving marked changes, and to their duty 
and interest to take a hand. 

About the meanest thing you can do to an ultra- 
conservative is to tell him there are going to be great 
changes in social and economic conditions. About 
the meanest thing you can do to a professional radical 
is to tell him that there is no real need for hopeless 
disagreement about it all. To the ultra-conservative 
it is a horrid nuisance that a comfortable status quo 
should be modified at all. A picture of ' * still life" 
(Dutch school), with the nice fruit and other good 
things all arrayed (for him), is much more comfort- 
able than a haunting canvas of joy and suffering and 
movement. Statics are less disturbing than dynamics ; 
but life is not like that. To the professional radical 
it is rather a nuisance that man should be so little 
fond of theory in comparison to the satisfactions of 
his routine and creature comforts. Still, with most 
human eyes turned lazily to the ' ' still-life ' ' picture of 
good things, the radical nevertheless gets his hearing. 
He gets the joy of battle for opinions, and this is to 
him the breath of life. But for the ultra-conservative, 
where would the radical be ? But for the professional 
radical, where the raison d'etre of the ultra-conserva- 
tive? These mutual enemies exist by the grace and 
for the sake of each other. The thought should be 



HUMAN NATURE: SOCIAL THEORY 199 

annoying to both! The radical lives by agitation, 
which can only be sincere and continuous and satis- 
factorily vehement if there is a really hopeless dis- 
agreement. If we can say that there are going to be 
great changes and if we can say, also, that there is 
really no need for hopeless disagreement about it all, 
we shall be able to confound both ultra-conservative 
and professional radical, which ought to be a great 
pleasure to the bulk of the population! A formula 
that must be accepted and that, in looking to change, 
upsets the metier of the standpatter and, in looking 
to peace, takes the zest from the life-business of the 
professional radical, ought to do the trick. Some 
wicked cynic, who preferred to serve man by the study 
of nature rather than by the study of phrases, might 
assert that the low-down natural law of instinctive 
self-preservation had rudely intruded even here in 
high social-economic politics and had dared to work 
upon both pillars of society and evangiles of reform! 
Well, here is the formula to confound both soggy 
opposition and over-shrill attack. We all favor all 
measures to improve the spiritual, intellectual and 
physical welfare of mankind, provided that those 
measures conform to the known laws of nature, espe- 
cially of human nature. All standpatters, except 
those of the four-feet-in-the-trough or the hopelessly 
stupid type, must accept this, disgusting to them as 
may be its implication of change. Aside from its ob- 



200 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

noxious intimation of possible peace, this formula 
has another virtue. Hugely annoying to our profes- 
sional radicals will be the obligation to study the past 
before building the future ; very painful to them will 
be the suggestion that they study man before re- 
making his environment. Any biologist, or even the 
man at the "zoo," will explain this necessity. 

Funny words, conservative and radical. Change 
being the law of life, those who would conserve should 
be the first to fall in with evolutionary change. And 
1 ' radical ' ' should be one who would go to the roots of 
matters. In politics, then, the "radical" should be 
the first to insist upon those radicals — the practical 
facts and the realities of human nature as known to 
history, science and experience. The ultra-conserva- 
tive (alias the reactionary or "standpatter") is the 
skeleton at the feast of optimism. He is dimly aware 
that things have changed; that things are changing, 
and that things will change much more; but it eases 
his feelings to look away at the past, to hold aloof 
from change, to be a passenger rather than an engi- 
neer on the ship of progress, only going into the engine 
room occasionally languidly to throw a wrench into 
the machinery when he thinks he sees specific harm 
coming his way. But we cannot afford to demobilize 
him except with the simultaneous demobilization of 
his antithesis, called, oddly enough, the radical. 

This is an epoch of too many seers and not enough 



HUMAN NATURE: SOCIAL THEORY 201 

sages. Of course, the wild radical has his uses. Hy- 
perbole and hot exaggeration are necessary to awaken 
sluggish human nature. But the gad-fly makes no 
honey. The seer of visions is not a safe architect for 
a temple to house the world. To intrust the drawing 
up of our reform policies to wild radicals or to ultra- 
conservatives would be equally futile. 

Respectable, intelligent ultra-conservatives who care 
more for the ' ' good old days ' ' than for the better new 
days of to-day and the still better ones of all the to- 
morrows have sometimes been called in France the 
bien pensants. These right-minded people perhaps 
derive their title by a process somewhat like that of 
the story in which the little girl asked her mamma 
what "right-minded people " were, and was at last 
answered, "Why, people who think as we do, my 
dear." We have many worthy bien pensants in the 
United States. They are the officers of the army of 
the indifferent. In all time, whether individually or 
in organizations, they seem to have been obstacles to 
progress. In fairness we may admit that in horrible 
epochs sometimes lumped under the caption of "the 
good old times," they may have served as brakes upon 
retrogression ; but in these modern days of ever better 
possibilities their passivity will be fatal; their co- 
operation is absolutely required. 

There is a simple answer to all ultra-conservatives. 
It leaves them no shred of justification in heaven or 



202 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

on earth. Almost any day one can read in news- 
papers that in this land of abundance there are still 
some innocent persons who are on the verge of star- 
vation, who are without means of good medical care, 
who are perishing in miserable surroundings, with no 
recourse but the possibility of private charity. We 
still have in some places slums, foul tenements, sweat- 
shops. We still have some old and worn-out faithful 
persons who are liable to end their days miserably. 
We have a more ridiculously inadequate public health 
service than any other first-class country. There has 
been improvement, of course, through private philan- 
thropy; and for some years more modern laws have 
slowly been coming into force. Yet things of this sort 
remain; and, merely as examples, they show clearly 
enough a shocking neglect of the nation 's own welfare 
by the nation as a State. With the extinction of 
feudalism liberty was given, but protection was with- 
drawn. Then came the era of laissez faire and sauve 
qui pent, the full liberty of unbridled individualism, 
mitigated only by religion and an individual charity 
gradually hardened and organized into societies, en- 
dowments, foundations, etc. As the bien pensant of 
to-day passes a beggar he is uncomfortable. His 
thought is that he must not be imposed upon and en- 
courage vagrancy ; that there must be some organiza- 
tion to which the beggar ought to appeal. There may 
or may not be. At best, if his is a " worthy case," 



HUMAN NATURE: SOCIAL THEORY 203 

if he is a good citizen in misfortune, then "we the 
people,' ' generally speaking, have nothing much to say 
to or to do for him as a Government. We offer him 
the indignity of private charity instead of the right 
to national protection. But if he is a criminal or a 
troublesome defective, we, as a Government, acknowl- 
edge his claims; he is a public charge. Strange dis- 
crimination! Whether or not combination in indus- 
try is preparation for socialism, certainly philan- 
thropic organizations offer a nucleus for the tardy as- 
sumption by the State of its first interest, the welfare 
of the people. Life will always offer ample play for 
the subjective advantages of kindness. Unbounded 
generosity does not justify failure to translate into 
actual conditions, through governmental policy, our 
national epigrams about life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness. 

We must accept as proper aims and concerns of the 
State a whole category of improvements in the condi- 
tions of the national life such as those discussed in the 
British Labor party's proposed programme under the 
topic of national minimum and social surplus. Rapid 
communication and machinery, with co-operation, 
have made abundance normally easy of attainment. 
Education, democracy and the modern spirit are at 
work eliminating philanthropy, whether religious or 
lay, as a tolerable means for some slight improvement 
in distribution. Combination and co-operation are ex- 



204 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

tensively eliminating competition as a stimulus to pro- 
duction. Calculated national requirement begins to 
call for more accurate work than that of the unaided 
law of supply and demand — demand that is silent, 
even when justified and honest, if it is empty-handed. 
If a willing worker or an unfortunate may face star- 
vation, so far as the State is concerned, through no 
fault of his own, then it is through the fault of his 
fellow citizens. Yes, there must be a national mini- 
mum. The great comparative luxury of modern life 
for all classes makes it possible to establish such a 
minimum for all decent persons, and thus to encroach 
just a little upon the first of the three indispensable 
stimuli to human progress through individual effort 
(namely, the necessity to work in order to live), be- 
cause there will be no relief for the willful drone and 
because the contemplated reliefs of anxiety and suffer- 
ing can be adjusted so as to leave intact the second and 
third stimuli (the necessity to work harder in order 
to live better and the ego's hunger for distinction). 
We have to achieve socialism's aim of better produc- 
tion and distribution while safeguarding those stimuli 
to effort without which society will die. Perhaps in 
America laziness, with intelligence as midwife, is the 
mother of invention, invention the mother of pros- 
perity, and prosperity the mother of laziness. Vigi- 
lance will be required or that vicious circle may be- 
come a noose about our neck. Self-interest or some 



HUMAN NATURE: SOCIAL THEORY 205 

form of force is the only universal motive-power for 
man. To eliminate self-interest is to eliminate liberty 
— even if the process be carried out in the name of 
democracy. In the exaltation and romance of war 
men are happy as members of vast armies. Hardly 
would they be so as cogs in the universal officialdom 
of complete socialism. The preservation of the stimuli 
to work marks the absolute limit of paternalism. 

It is unnecessary to recapitulate the long list of 
proper fields for Government responsibility in improv- 
ing the conditions of life. In the interesting pro- 
gramme of the British Labor party's committee the 
subjects of ways and means for providing a national 
minimum and a better use of the social surplus are dis- 
cussed chiefly under their two remaining topics — the 
democratic control of industry and the revolution in 
national finance which they propose, possibly with a 
bark purposely worse than their intended bite (for 
they are, after all, a political party and, therefore, 
somewhat human). At any rate, they appear to aim, 
theoretically, at least, at gradual ultimate confisca- 
tion, through capital, income and inheritance taxes, of 
all private property beyond what is necessary, one 
gathers, to such a standard of living as that to which 
the great majority can aspire. The transfer and re- 
distribution of income, one infers, are to come in wages 
from employers pending the nationalization of all 
important industries, whereupon they would come in 



206 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

salaries and public benefits from the State. In blandly 
disposing of the existing order, these spokesmen of 
labor naturally fall into a certain amount of unfair- 
ness and exaggeration, the common disposition to set 
up the particular as the general, some inaccuracies, a 
measure of ex parte bitterness. For instance, in al- 
luding to new fortunes from war profits they quite 
ignore the service rendered by the makers of those 
fortunes. Even they pass by the compensatory cast- 
ing of old fortunes into the war — to say nothing of 
the most conspicuous sacrifice of life for their country 
made by an aristocracy to which they seem frankly 
hostile. As politicians they wisely intimate the rais- 
ing of the limit of permissible income to a point where 
they hope it will appeal to the great majority as the 
price for forfeiture of greater opportunity. It must 
be confessed, too, with regret, that in the apparent 
purpose to safeguard labor from virtually all taxation, 
even indirect, and in the general tone of its discus- 
sion of the road to Utopia, the British draft manifesto 
is not so free from the sacrifices of the judicial atti- 
tude to that of the class-conscious partisan as could 
be wished. We ourselves, as a nation of advocates 
rather than of judicially disposed thinkers, shall have 
much trouble here when we seriously take up our 
similar problems. 

The ultimate picture of the future painted on be- 
half of British labor is so nearly one of complete so- 



HUMAN NATURE: SOCIAL THEORY 207 

cialism that it has seemed both fair and necessary to 
criticize it in the light of the obvious arguments 
against that doctrine. Moreover, it is fair and also 
necessary to examine preliminary steps in full view 
of the destination to which, in strict logic, they lead. 
We must grant the need of paternalism in govern- 
ment for a great systematic amelioration of life. 
Every kind and just person must come so far as that. 
This means the idea of a national minimum, many 
works for national welfare and a better use of sur- 
plus wealth. And this brings us, too, face to face with 
the whole question of taxation and with the question 
of the proper degree of control by the nation, through 
its government, of industry and finance. These ques- 
tions come up as part of a national aim we cannot 
escape. They come up still more in connection with 
ways and means to pursue that aim. Inasmuch as 
these things have been coming with accelerated speed 
ever since the decision in the Northern Securities 
anti-trust case, and have been coming in a veritable 
avalanche since we entered the war, we shall not be 
startled. 

Granting, then, our agreement in principle that a 
great systematic amelioration of life through action 
by the Government is our aim and adhering to our 
formula that we all favor measures to improve the 
spiritual, intellectual and physical welfare of the na- 
tion, provided that those measures conform to the 



208 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

known laws of nature, especially of human nature, 
we shall find ourselves compelled to grant also in the 
name of another of our national epigrams — the one^ 
about freedom and equality — that measures must be 
taken to render less sharp the existing differences in 
individual wealth. Looking at those differences as 
plotted in a curve, we shall have to flatten the curve 
somewhat by reducing excessive upward peaks and 
downward thrusts and giving to it a more gently un- 
dulating, although by no means a flat, aspect. This 
will be required both by the true aim of our institu- 
tions and in order to afford, through taxation, the 
funds for the improvements to be made. 



XXII 



AN AMERICAN VIEW 



Where overwhelming American opinion will part 
company with the authors of the British Labor party 
memorandum we have been considering is in the de- 
gree of socialistic innovation that is necessary, desir- 
able or safe ; in the relative virtue of different modes 
of socialization, and, above all, in the point of view 
from which the problems are to be approached. These 
representatives of British labor propose the destruc- 
tion of the existing order and the substitution of a 
new one. We in America shall generally quite dissent 
from this and shall see our way to obtaining the good 
and avoiding the bad by the method of developing, 
modifying and building upon our existing order while 
preserving, not destroying, its essentials. 

To develop a point of view, which is of first im- 
portance in considering these questions, it has been 
necessary to make a discursive, if short, journey into 
the more patent aspects of the philosophy of socialism. 
We have seen that the preservation of the three stim- 

209 



210 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

uli to progress through human effort, namely, the ne- 
cessity to work in order to live, the necessity to work 
harder in order to live better and the ego 's hunger for 
distinction, marks the absolute limit of paternalism. 
On the same principle we see that the prizes of life 
must not be dangerously reduced. The inequality 
brought about by biology and heredity is beyond our 
reach. In seeking the practicable degree of equality 
of opportunity we must find means to do so without 
spreading opportunity so thin that it will be tempting 
to no one. Just so of private wealth. And just here 
persons quite unfamiliar with economics will do well 
to remember that the millionaire can eat no more 
than the poor man, can sleep in only one bed at a 
time — that, indeed, as said in some comic verses : "You 
can only wear one tie, one eyeglass in your eye, fill 
one coffin when you die, don't you know." Wealth 
in its present form spread thin would have little effect 
but that of removing all prizes for effort. What is 
wanted is co-operation to deflect from luxury to neces- 
sities and comforts enough work to cause plentiful 
production of the latter, and to improve distribution 
thereof. 

In short, it is submitted that the present system 
wisely and moderately socialized, is probably the only 
system by which sufficient freedom and real progress 
can be combined with sufficient protection to the in- 
dividual. The present system, socialized, can dimin- 



AN AMERICAN VIEW 211 

ish handicaps (by taxation, better education, etc.), 
and can at the same time preserve enough prizes and 
stimuli to effort to keep the nation progressing. After 
all, will not men of talent, as owners, managers, and 
so forth, in industry, taxed and controlled, amount 
to much the same in effect as men of talent in the role 
of higher-paid officials in the industries of socialism, 
plus the fact that in the present system, properly con- 
trolled, they would retain more individual incentive? 
Taxed enough and controlled enough, the capitalist 
becomes, to a large extent, the steward of the public. 
Half a dozen years ago, with the Sherman law and its 
*'rule of reason," with the proposal for Federal in- 
corporation, with the resultant control to be expected 
through regulation which should assure to labor, to 
capital and to the public a fair share in the economies 
of combination, we were well on a safe road to which 
we shall have to return. Elaboration of the principles 
applied at that time approached a clear recognition of 
excessive profits as evidence of monopoly or wrong- 
ful methods and marked a pretty clear course. Add 
to this a systematization of our inheritance taxes, add 
excess-profits taxation and a heavy graduated income 
tax, and it would seem clearly within our grasp to 
socialize American industry and finance and gain all 
the hoped-for advantages without plunging into the 
dangers of socialism. We may, if we like, make fur- 
ther trial of municipal or State ownership, although 



212 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

we ought to tread very carefully on that path for rea- 
sons which include, in the United States, the danger 
of mortgaging too great a section of the electorate to 
the political party in power at any time. 

To repudiate the system of socialism is not to re- 
pudiate the soundness of its general aims nor, indeed, 
the wisdom of taking something from it. Many things 
are good in moderation, although deadly in excess. 
"We may believe that the preservation of the just and 
equitable rights of capital are essential to freedom 
and to progress, while at the same time admitting the 
need of socialization. In this work which the Ameri- 
can people should be able to approach with confidence 
the cornerstone of success must be mutual humanity, 
consideration and sympathy on the part of labor and 
capital alike. The capitalist who regards his business 
or his industry as so sacredly private that the nation 
shall have no voice through its Government in seeing 
that he shall serve the public, and that the labor in it 
shall have no representation or co-operation in its 
management, must change his tactics. Equally so must 
labor, wherever its whole view of national affairs is 
focused on the one question how much it can exact for 
the smallest service. Efficiency in service is the true 
measure of the individual laborer's worthiness of his 
hire and of the capitalist's title to his profits. To 
capital and to labor the nation owes not the highest 
possible interest per dollar or the highest possible wage 



AN AMERICAN VIEW 213 

per hour, but a compensation into the computation of 
which there enters the quality and value of the service 
rendered by the individual. Against slacker labor 
there will have to be differentiation, by the unions or 
otherwise, just as there already is, by natural law 
and sometimes by municipal law, against slacker cap- 
ital, — except that engaged in gambling. Until this 
new point of view of a sympathetic co-operation 
in service for mutual gain and for public benefit shall 
permeate both labor and capital, both will wear the 
aspect of blindly selfish forces and anti-social elements 
in the nation. With the new point of view, we can 
rapidly make America a true commonwealth, with 
enough for all but with ample prizes for individual 
effort. 

Some of our ultra-radicals seem to forget that 
things, although very imperfect, are hardly desper- 
ately bad in the United States. Perhaps uncon- 
sciously they look at the worst slums or at the worst 
conditions in some foreign countries and apply their 
texts to the United States generally. Here we have 
made much progress and we can find our road if we 
will only look for it and if our conservatives will only 
cease to let well enough alone when all is not well 
and will, instead, join heartily to make good the prom- 
ise of America. We have democracy and universal 
suffrage; the American people can have what they 
want. The national epigrams about life, liberty, hap- 



214 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

piness, freedom and equality were earnestly tittered. 
We have now to put more energy and more wise con- 
structive statesmanship into improving their realiza- 
tion. 

It is believed with an elaboration of such indications 
as those given above there could be worked out an 
American programme of constructive progress on 
American foundations for the increase of social and 
economic justice in our country. Logically, such a 
programme would seem likely to appeal to the Repub- 
lican party, which is so richly associated with the con- 
structive statesmanship of the United States. Will 
that be so or shall we see that party splitting into two 
parts, the one dedicated to an unsound radicalism and 
the other to an equally unsound conservatism? The 
Democratic party appears in recent years, at least, to 
have cast aside all the shibboleths which formerly dis- 
tinguished it as a party of principles. Will it attempt 
and can it succeed in holding the conservative South 
to a programme either moderately or excessively rad- 
ical, or will the conservative South make of it a con- 
servative party to which might go the determined' 
standpatters among Republicans ? Will the Republican 
party do the country the great service of publicly 
withdrawing from the local politics affecting the negro 
question in the South, as a party purely of national 
issues ? If so, cannot the country gain the inestimable 
advantage of again having its whole electorate mal- 



AN AMERICAN VIEW 215 

leable and free to respond at the polls to whatever be 
the national policies of which it approves? Such 
speculations become more and more interesting these 
days, and may possibly be illuminated in connection 
with the election of next autumn, in which even under 
the restraints of wartime the ultimate issue of fact vs. 
theory, in both national and international affairs, may 
possibly emerge somewhat. 



XXIII 



THE WAR OF THE UNBORN 



There is one future war that is certain, and that 
is the battle of birth rates, the peaceful war of the 
unborn who shall be good in health, mind and char- 
acter and who shall stand for the upward progress of 
mankind against the defective, the vicious, the de- 
graded and all those who are ever a downward drag 
upon, civilization. Criminality, ignoble character and 
social worthlessness, whether in those who as public 
charges are a burden upon society or in those who at 
large radiate the most evil influences in the social 
body, are more and more being recognized as due, in 
their unfortunate victims, chiefly to hereditary taint 
or weakness, with alcoholism, disease and bad bringing 
up as aids to degeneracy. The number of defectives 
is appalling. The birth rate among the fit is far below 
what it should be. The laws of this coming war are 
known. Victory will depend upon preparedness. 

Now, an honorable and just peace among nations 
and an upward evolution of man must rest, in reality, 

216 



THE WAR OF THE UNBORN 217 

upon keeping predominant potential power in the 
hands of the most honorable, righteous and just na- 
tions. Domestic peace and an honorable, just and 
equitable national life and the evolution of an ever 
finer nation correspondingly depend upon assuring 
that the number of morally and physically healthy, 
intelligent people in the country shall be increasingly 
and overwhelmingly predominant. Higher standards 
of international or of national conduct may improve 
the conditions of evolution ; they may advantageously 
modify the subject-matter through which the im- 
mutable laws work. Such is the method of civiliza- 
tion's progress. But the laws remain, and it will be 
perceived that to respect them is of equal interest to 
all. The holders of every shade of social or political 
opinion must alike bow to the unchanging laws by 
which the Almighty governs the universe; and most 
vital among these stand the inexorable truths of bi- 
ology. Neither ritual nor ceremony, nor social or po- 
litical scheme, can stand against those fateful laws. 
Those who consciously co-operate with nature's laws 
will hasten, those who do not will retard, that upward 
progress of humanity in spiritual, intellectual and 
physical welfare which may be supposed to be the aim 
of all — the care of religionist, scientist, economist and 
statesman. 

A birth rate can only be good in effect if it is high 
by the qualitative as well as by the quantitative test 



218 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

and if the children are supplied an environment that 
permits them to grow up to be decent, healthy peo- 
ple. In this one absolutely certain war of the future 
the ideas and aspirations of the nation or the collec- 
tion of mankind which has the best birth rate — which 
most effectively respects the laws of eugenics, of sex 
hygiene and of children's welfare — will prevail. The 
fittest to survive — those who respond to nature's laws 
— will survive. Here is a solemn and fundamental 
concern of the people and of the Government of the 
United States of America. 

Splendid work for eugenics has gone forward in 
this country for some years, centered chiefly in the 
Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, Long 
Island, under Doctor Davenport. Through lectures 
and writings and the publication of a magazine, the 
work has also been carried to the universities and 
elsewhere. But the meaning of eugenics is still popu- 
larly misunderstood and neglected. For the cause of 
sex hygiene most excellent work has been carried on 
by the American Society for Social Hygiene as a chief 
agency. President Wilson's Administration and Sec- 
retary Raker and the army and navy have done them- 
selves great honor and the country unmeasurable 
service in starting promptly upon our entrance into 
the war to do the great work of minimizing the oc- 
currence and the effects of venereal diseases in the 
American army and navy. All praise is due to the 



THE WAR OF THE UNBORN 219 

officials, the officers and the doctors for the splendid 
work being done, and especially to Major William F. 
Snow, M. R. C, of the Society for Social Hygiene and 
now chairman of the committee on venereal diseases 
of the Council of National Defense, and also to the 
subcommittee for civilian co-operation in this matter. 
Only second to theirs are the efforts of Mr. Fosdick's 
commission on training-camp activities, of the Y. M. 
C. A., the Y. W. C. A., and various other bodies aiding 
in this stupendous task. Among the most encouraging 
signs are the new and open co-operation of many wom- 
en's clubs, the frank recognition of the need of open 
warfare upon venereal disease already made in the 
" Woman Citizen," and the unflinching attitude and 
words of Representative Jeanette Rankin at a com- 
mittee hearing in the House, as reported by that 
magazine. But the horrifying and fateful truths 
about sex hygiene still remain largely matters of pop- 
ular ignorance and misunderstanding. Only a corner 
has been lifted of the mask of age-long Pharisaical 
hypocrisy and false modesty that still leave venereal 
diseases a blight and a menace to the nation. 

A few years ago our democracy condescended to de- 
cide that it might not be altogether irrelevant if a 
government "for the people" should take a mild in- 
terest in the question whether people should go on 
dying quite needlessly and by wholesale during in- 
fancy or being deprived in infancy of the chance of 



220 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

health and happiness. This, no doubt, seemed vision- 
ary to the "practical politician" and to his creator, 
the citizen-for-individual-prosperity-only. But the 
Children's Bureau of the Federal Government was 
established and Miss Julia Lathrop was placed at its 
head. Eugenics and sex hygiene go to the same pur- 
pose as children's welfare work. They are also vastly 
more vitally fundamental, for between them they 
cover the questions whether happy, healthy, normal 
people are to be born at all ; whether the normal are 
to decrease and the defective to increase; whether 
people are to be born damned in advance to misery — 
mentally, physically or morally defective. Eugenics 
and sex hygiene are thus subjects the very most funda- 
mental. Moreover, both have long emerged from the 
tentative stage and are scientifically as clear in many 
essentials as the formulae of mathematics. Our gov- 
ernment "for the people" has been driven by the war 
to go into sex hygiene. Eugenics, the uttermost fun- 
damental of human welfare, still fails to engage offi- 
cial attention. Stephen Leacock said with ridiculous 
truth of raising new war crops that Rule No. 1 seemed 
to be to begin last year or year-before-last. Quite 
similarly, if children's welfare and national welfare 
are to be taken up otherwise than in the most absurdly 
superficial and fragmentary way, then first and second 
places must be given to the common-sense elementary 



THE WAR OF THE UNBORN 221 

facts of eugenics and to those of sex hygiene. Only 
so can we raise the birth rate of normal people and 
reduce the reproduction of the defective — to do which 
is to become powerfully girt for the coming battle 
of the birth rates, and thus fit to contribute as a great 
nation to the progress of civilization. 

The newspapers have announced that the Govern- 
ment, startled by the physical defects of American 
manhood revealed by the selective-service examina- 
tions, will initiate through the Council of National De- 
fense and the Children's Bureau a " children's year," 
to begin on the anniversary of America's entering the 
war. The idea is splendid. Miss Lathrop is reported 
to contemplate birth registration, midwifery and med- 
ical aid, children's clinics, bureaus of child hygiene, 
improved milk supply and a wage scale making decent 
living conditions possible to parents as the objects of 
the coming propaganda. These aims are excellent, 
but " children's year" will be only a beautiful and 
rather feeble gesture if it is to attend to these plati- 
tudes of child welfare, necessarily palliative in so 
many cases, while passing over the present Heaven- 
sent opportunity to give to the American people the 
always constructive, always fundamental and even 
more urgently needed education in the harsh rudi- 
ments of eugenics and sex hygiene. Can it be possible 
that prudery, superficialty, the lack of broad vision 
and bold action or the usual lack of co-ordination 



222 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

shall be permitted to rob the nation of the present 
unique opportunity to do a great constructive work 
of real preparedness for national strength and wel- 
fare? 

There is another fundamental that dovetails per- 
fectly into any broad, honest and serious scheme of 
propaganda for this "children's year" which, rightly 
viewed, will be nothing less than the nation's year for 
real preparedness through the sincere, soul-searching 
and bold action for which the war has made us ready 
as never before. There is a commissioner of educa- 
tion at Washington. There are certain simple scien- 
tific principles, elucidated by Professor William James 
and others, for that basic education that can be given 
perhaps only in infancy : the education of the natural 
reactions — the building of good character. Those 
principles correspond rather curiously to the rough 
school of unmitigated nature from which, in this land, 
most children are barred by artificial luxury — and 
some by artificial misery. Those almost mathematical 
rudiments of infant education by experience and by 
example are not popularly understood. Children's 
year will be a time to make them so. 

Conformity to the laws of eugenics and sex hygiene 
can alone assure that the child shall be born at all and, 
if born, shall be born normal. The ordinary measures 
for children's welfare will then preserve to the child 
the inestimable blessing of health. The observance of 



THE WAR OF THE UNBORN 223 

a few principles of infant education here steps in to 
mold his natural reactions into the habit of spontan- 
eous good reactions, which are natural good character 
and naturally lovable personality. Happy the man 
or woman who is the product of all those beginnings ! 
Of such, no doubt, are those rare and irresistibly 
charming souls sometimes to be met who seem to be 
and to do almost without effort what the hardiest 
idealist can hardly compass through a lifetime of 
strife with a nature less happy in its beginnings ! The 
very existence of those rare people at least stakes out 
the road to national preparedness in its highest sense. 
It is marked above all by eugenics, sex hygiene, chil- 
dren's welfare work and truer education in infancy 
and later. 

When President Roosevelt appointed a National 
Conservation Commission he added to the long list of 
his great services to the American people. The in- 
valuable report made that commission by Professor 
Irving Fisher, of Yale, on " National Vitality, Its 
Waste and Conservation, ' ' marked a step forward in 
our democracy's belated governmental concern in 
many of the matters that most basically affect its de- 
clared object to have government "for the people,' ' 
and "for the greatest good of the greatest number." 
What Professor Fisher had to say about sex hygiene 
was appalling. It should have been shouted from the 
housetops. It was not. The war had not awakened 



224 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

America then. Our pioneer workers for education in 
the practical facts of eugenics have done the nation a 
great service. President Wilson's Administration is 
earning the gratitude of the nation by its magnificent 
work to preserve the flower of the nation, now called 
to the colors, in its fitness as the best we have for the 
fatherhood of the next generation. Miss Lathrop's 
work for the proposed children's year is excellent. 
The Commissioner of Education could assume an im- 
portant national role. There will never again be such 
an opportunity. The war has shaken people out of 
their old ruts, their old reserves and selfishness. "We 
have as never before leagues and associations, fearless 
and patriotic, and able to reach every community. 
The fundamentals of common-sense eugenics, the glar- 
ing facts of sex hygiene, the rudiments of children's 
welfare and the elementary principles of scientific 
education should be set forth in one brief and frank 
pamphlet. There should be co-operation for its compi- 
lation between the Eugenics Record Office, the com- 
mittee on venereal diseases of the Council of National 
Defense (and the Society for Social Hygiene), the 
Children's Bureau and the Commissioner of Educa- 
tion. Such a pamphlet should be distributed broad- 
cast to newspapers, teachers, the clergy and a thou- 
sand other categories of people. A veritable revolu- 
tion in education could thus be achieved — by boldness 
and co-ordination of effort. 



THE WAR OF THE UNBORN 225 

Here is a field for women who would show them- 
selves serious, courageous and sincere, and able to be 
a great force for good in their country. Only they can 
set Artemis above Venus in the eyes of young man- 
hood. Only they can impress the standards of fitness 
and clean living and healthy parenthood upon the 
young men of their country. Here, too, is a chance 
for the clergy of the land to show that they are 
abreast of the times, that they are not afraid to call 
things by their right names, that they are fit to lead 
in a movement for the amelioration, through frank 
education, of the moral and physical welfare of the 
nation. Here is a chance, too, for our broad-visioned 
millionaire philanthropists, a chance for our Govern- 
ment and a chance for all workers for real prepared- 
ness. This work is based on indisputable truth and it 
concerns every one. 



XXIV 

SOME PHASES OF FOREIGN POLICY 

From the vast field of the social, economic and po- 
litical problems of our national life out to the field of 
foreign relations, which forms the border to national 
life, is no far cry. The national life is the "inward 
and spiritual grace,' ' of which any diplomacy that is 
worth while is the ' ' outward and visible sign. ' ' The 
diplomacy of a country is the emanation of its na- 
tional life. Through its diplomacy, in a broad sense, 
each country makes its contribution to the progress 
of world civilization. The quality and strength of in- 
ternational influence will depend upon the quality and 
vigor of the national life and of the representation of 
that national life by the State. So all rests, in a 
democracy, upon the degree in which the citizenship, 
acting through the State, is pursuing with noble pur- 
pose, intelligence and zeal the aim of national so- 
ciety — the increase of the citizens' spiritual, intellec- 
tual and physical welfare and happiness. 

But in addition to its concern with national and in- 

226 



SOME PHASES OF FOREIGN POLICY 227 

ternational growth, statesmanship has the heavy obli- 
gation of conservation, that is, of the defense and 
preservation of what has been achieved, nationally 
and internationally. And until the Prussian menace 
shall have been removed this task of defense must en- 
gross all the care of State and of citizenship. Indeed, 
for an indefinite period of the world's future history, 
defense, the most essential form of conservation, must 
take first place. 

In the diplomacy of defense there loom clear before 
the eyes of every thinking person certain great under- 
takings which not only seem to have been long neg- 
lected, but, so far as known, have not to this very day 
been entered upon with the slightest approach to the 
vast energy and resource that should be applied to 
them. We hope for and expect victory either on the 
battlefield of Europe, or through an overwhelming 
aerial offensive which shall crush the heart of Ger- 
many ; but we have no absolute assurance that this is 
attainable. The melancholy reflection that if the 
American Government had shown wisdom, foresight, 
and promptness in facing facts and beginning war- 
like preparations in 1914, and even earlier, things 
would to-day be entirely different, does not alter the 
fact. If facts were not faced then, they must at least 
be faced now. Wise statesmenship prepares even more 
carefully for the worst than for the best possibilities. 
What, then, is being done in respect to our second line 



228 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

of defense, in case of the remote, perhaps, but horrible 
possibility of our being too late on the present west- 
ern front? Is it not perfectly plain that in such 
eventuality, we and our Allies must sit down perhaps 
to the very long task of building and maintaining a 
ring around the Central Powers with which gradually 
to bind them until they break? Indeed, in the ab- 
sence of anything but the absolutely crushing defeat 
of the Central Powers, only by such a ring can the 
world be kept safe from Prussian dominion. 

In this ring of military and naval power, of eco- 
nomic and political boycott, of social and moral ostra- 
cism, the Slavic power is a necessary link and the 
unanimous alignment of Latin- America, which must 
carry with it Spain, is clearly of great importance. 
America and her Allies should send into Russia a well- 
directed army of propagandists, sparing no money 
and no talent in the task. At the same time, as has 
already been indicated, there should be sent to the 
Bolshevik de facto authority an able and sympathetic 
commission empowered to offer Russia economic, mili- 
tary, and political assistance and strong support of 
any sanely socialistic democratic form of government 
that will reunite the Russian people for their struggle, 
long or short, against Deutschtum. The road via 
Yladivostock is open for this effort. Without such 
preparatory work, military aid, however disinterested, 
may be disastrously misinterpreted. The German 



SOME PHASES OF FOREIGN POLICY 229 

propaganda and German diplomacy and economic of- 
fensive in Russia must be met and defeated from the 
East.* Surely this work done with great skill and 
upon a grand scale, if coupled with a guarantee 
to the Russian people of a democratic form of 
government, no matter how socialistic, if sane and 
conscionable, ought to be able to bring about con- 
ditions in which the Russian people could reunite, re- 
organize and take their place in the war. Through 
propaganda of truth carried out upon the same great 
scale, the Government of the United States ought also 
to be able to swing all the American Republics into 
the war against Germany. 

In a fashion somewhat analagous to that of the Rus- 
sian Bolsheviki, some of the people of Ireland are al- 
lowing ancient grievances to obscure their eyes to the 
patent fact that the liberty they love so well is the 
very thing now at stake everywhere. In both cases 
there is the strange phenomenon of ardent lip-service 
of liberty coupled with the willingness to stand aside, 
intent on selfish, narrow aims and ideals, while liberty, 
the foundation of all, shall perish or be saved by oth- 
ers. It would seem that the American Government, 
backed by the splendidly loyal portion of our citizen- 



* Here, as whenever there emerges a great task calling for 
energy, magnetism, enthusiasm, courage and political 
sagacity, the country recalls with a pang the fact that no 
way has yet been found to put directly to its service 
Roosevelt, its most dynamic human asset. 



230 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

ship which is of Irish blood, might devise ways here 
to be of acceptable use to our brave British ally and 
to the best of Ireland. The question is surely worth 
considering. 

To return to the glaring need of unheard of efforts 
to align Latin- America and to bring about Russian re- 
organization, in order to complete the ring upon the 
East, the Entente Allies will need a strengthened 
China, an active Japan, even a Persia and an India 
more keenly alive to the danger. The work of this 
vast campaign of education and organization that long 
ago ought to have been under way is so essential, not 
only to make but to keep the world safe from the 
Teutonic menace, that it seems almost incredible that 
governments endowed with foresight should have left 
it, so far as is known, in almost complete neglect! 

Thoughtless and dogmatic idealism based upon 
catch-words for popular prejudice is one of the fa- 
miliar banes of American policy and opinion. We 
must not, because the word ' ' propaganda ' ' is just now 
so associated with the brutal aims and the low methods 
of the Teutonic power, shy at propaganda for our own 
good cause. We have had to fight the devil with his 
own kinds of fire, however repugnant to us, on the bat- 
tlefield; why should we be squeamish in the intellec- 
tual and emotional field of propaganda ? A campaign 
of truth in a good cause is a fine enough aim to justify 
a great deal ; and our propaganda, to be effective, need 



SOME PHASES OF FOREIGN POLICY 231 

not be of a quality to require any very exceptional 
justification. Truly it is more important to remem- 
ber the serpent 's wisdom than the dove 's harmlessness 
in these times. 

The Near East, where America still has formal dip- 
lomatic relations with Bulgaria, is another very obvi- 
ous field for energetic propaganda, and one that may 
later prove fertile. Through the work of American 
missionaries, schools, and colleges this country has, in 
Bulgaria and in the Ottoman Empire, a potential 
moral and intellectual influence the extent of which 
few of us quite realize. The field is open on the 
Mesopotamian front ; it is open on the Balkan front ; 
it is even open, technically, through Sofia. It may 
prove possible for our diplomacy and for the right 
kind of propaganda to cause the seeds sown in many 
decades of work among the peoples of the Near East 
to blossom, at the proper time, into realization of the 
Prussian noose and vigorous action, with the help of 
the Entente Allies, to loosen it, — and so to advance the 
true interests of the Near East and the safety of the 
world. 

Whether the war shall end abruptly or whether war 
shall very gradually fade into peace through the slow 
pressure of the vast league against Germany, there 
will in any case arise a huge number of great and pro- 
found problems of American foreign policy, problems 
having nothing to do with military secrets, but inti- 



232 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

mately affecting the future interests of America. As 
a question of our future safety we shall want an al- 
liance of the English-speaking peoples leagued with 
our present Allies. Territorial adjustments and re- 
sponsibilities in the Caribbean region and even in 
Africa may arise in a manner to have great interest 
for the United States. There will have to be new tariff 
arrangements, — with no more sweeping ' 'favored na- 
tion ' * clauses, but with flexible schedules to be admin- 
istered in harmony with our world policy, our friend- 
ships and our national interests. In Mexico we shall 
have to reverse a policy of unreality which had the 
pretty sound and the theory of detached and disinter- 
ested altruism, but which resulted in practical dam- 
age to ourselves, to the Mexicans, and to the world at 
large. In returning to a positive, practical and con- 
structive policy of reality we shall have to recoup 
the damages that have accrued to this country di- 
rectly and through the obligations to Europe which 
run with the Monroe Doctrine. Everywhere, we 
shall have to return from the theoretical to the 
practical, — from a diplomacy of Utopian aspira- 
tion to a "dollar diplomacy/ ' of attainable good 
sought through practical economic, social, and politi- 
cal forces backed by the prestige of the national power. 
We are not, and cannot be if we would, disinterested 
spectators of Mexico's course. Intelligent Mexicans 
must know this. How curious it is, how incredible, 



SOME PHASES OF FOREIGN POLICY 233 

that the consequences of their short-sightedness and 
our own supineness still present us the grotesque pic- 
ture of an adjoining American republic still the field 
of Prussian enterprise and propaganda, still the resi- 
dence of an intriguing German legation ! 



XXV 



FAITH AND WORKS 



The need of statesmanship and diplomacy of the 
highest order has never been so tragically vital to us 
as it is to-day when all is at stake. Wisdom, fore- 
sight, cleverness, promptness and thoroughness were 
never more urgently required in our government. 
The degree to which it is the duty of our citizenship 
to protest, to suggest, — nay, to demand, — this or that 
official action is measured by the degree to which we 
may be compelled honestly to believe that those essen- 
tial qualities may be more or less lacking in the con- 
duct of the State. Only if quite satisfied that the 
conduct of the State in a crisis is being determined 
by an entirely satisfactory degree of wisdom, fore- 
sight, cleverness, promptness, and thoroughness can 
the citizen conscientiously remain passive. 

Are these qualities essential to statesmanship surely 
sufficiently active at Washington to-day? We have 
to judge mainly by the past. Now everyone must ad- 
mit that, in spite of all warnings, years before August, 

234 



FAITH AND WORKS 235 

1914, and from that date until we entered the war on 
April 6, 1917, there was no evidence of foresight; 
nothing worth mentioning was done, in the face of the 
glaringly obvious and urgent demand for military 
preparedness. There was no sign at Washington of 
a forward-looking sense of the war's meaning to 
America. Neither is there any question that after we 
had entered the war many months were wasted in a 
farcical bungling of the ship-building programme; 
that the history of the air-craft programme has been 
grotesque ; that the ordnance inefficiency was for many 
months an incredible nightmare. Let these few ex- 
amples suffice. They are cited merely as known facts 
and not at all in the luxury of lament. We should 
not dwell upon them in dejection of spirit nor need 
we do so, just now, in order to place blame. We do 
need to dwell upon these sad experiences for another 
reason. They illustrate what government in a democ- 
racy may do and may neglect if citizenship be not 
alert and exacting. They do warn us not to assume 
too much; they do teach that faith without works on 
the part of public opinion is supremely dangerous; 
they do warn us that, unless the country absolutely 
demand them, there is no real guarantee that wisdom, 
foresight, cleverness, promptness and thoroughness 
will always be brought to the translation of the na- 
tional purpose into governmental action. 

It is well to remember that most of the ameliora- 



236 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

tions that seem to have begun in many directions have 
been subsequent to the courageous, honest and con- 
structive criticism of Senator Chamberlain and oth- 
ers. The fact that this is so only serves to emphasize 
the clear civic duty of watchfulness and of construc- 
tive, patriotic suggestion and criticism, however oner- 
ous and thankless they may be. The highest states- 
manship does not wait, in a crisis, to be forced forward 
by a public opinion which must outrun government 
in foresight. It does not lie inert like drift-wood 
upon the sea of events. Even in a democracy, the 
positive mandate of public opinion should not be 
awaited, especially in a crisis, before the future is 
envisaged and adequate governmental action is taken. 
Where events, and among them the event of irresistible 
public demand, are awaited, policies will ever be those 
of V esprit de I'escalier; and action will always be de- 
plorably late. 

Granting the greatness of the difficulties encoun- 
tered, gratefully acknowledging the good achieved, 
admitting that public disquietude upon some matters 
kept secret for valid military reasons might disappear 
if the facts were known, yet there still remain very 
many matters as to which no secrecy seems called for 
by the public interest and as to which the country has 
not been made aware that adequate measures are ac- 
tually being taken. Among such matters are vital 
questions of policy which cannot safely be neglectedi 



FAITH AND WORKS 237 

Upon these the country should either be assured that 
its mandate to pursue certain courses may safely be 
assumed to flow from the .national situation and from 
the fixed rudiments of American policy, or else should 
be given fuller opportunity to express itself in the 
councils of the State. The lack of a real war council 
has obviously crippled the American Government in 
its most important function, — that of thought, fore- 
sight and planning, and of using the united sagacity 
and skill of all. With such a war council, auxiliary 
to a small bi-partisan committee of Congress, and com- 
posed, irrespective of party, of the country's wisest 
heads, the President's vast labors would be immensely 
more promptly and surely effective ; adequate thought, 
foresight and planning would be possible; and the 
country would be immensely better informed and re- 
assured. 

As matters now stand, what do the public know, 
what do even Senators of the United States know, of 
the background of policy that is behind official action 
or inaction? Who knows, for example merely, what 
is brewing in the diplomatic witches' cauldron pre- 
sided over by Colonel House and his collaborators? 
Surely neither military secrecy nor partisan exclusive- 
ness should shut out the Senate, the President 's consti- 
tutional council upon foreign affairs, from any ade- 
quate knowledge of the course of the ship of state, 
except what may be gained by inspecting its wake. 



238 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

How, without knowledge, is the most intelligent co- 
operation possible or completely assured confidence 
attainable? Only by an act of supreme faith. And 
is it quite fair, however great and however justified 
the nation's faith may be, that the people of a democ- 
racy should be asked, in a supreme crisis, to accept 
faith not as an accompaniment but as a substitute for 
that thorough-going representation in weighty de- 
cisions of state to which their institutions have habit- 
uated them? 

We have all approved the old adjuration to l ' Trust 
in God but keep your powder dry." Let us by all 
means trust the President, as indeed we must, for to 
the President falls the greatest share in the terrible 
responsibilities of the present and the immediately 
looming future; but let us not neglect criticism, or 
even party political action in the best sense whenever 
it is clear that the national interests can be served 
thereby. The voices of hif alutin, of unsound idealism, 
of wild radicalism are in the air; the voice of ultra- 
conservatism is certain to be heard. All these forces 
press upon an administration immersed in action and 
not yet well organized for deliberation. Surely it is 
no time for the voices of sound policy and practical 
knowledge, of whatever political party, to be silent. 

In all our great problems, as in the demand for 
universal service and in war and after war policies 
generally, it will be the duty of American citizens to 



FAITH AND WORKS 239 

take a keen and active interest. American govern- 
ments are at all times the mere trustees of the na- 
tion's powers. These powers must be exercised for the 
practical benefit of the United States and must not, 
from however lofty motives, be deflected from the cir- 
cumspect pursuit of the nation's true interests. 
Neither in the midst of war, nor later in the difficult 
days of settlement, must the national interest go by 
default through public apathy. There is hard work 
ahead for citizens who wish to see democracy vindicate 
its efficiency in the world as it is to-day. To the 
Executive, to which the war brings the responsibility 
of such extraordinary power, as well as to the Con- 
gress of the United States, citizens look with the 
greatest earnestness for the protection of the country, 
whether in action or in tendency, against the perils 
alike of hifalutin and of ultra-conservatism in the dif- 
ficult times ahead. In return for the universal sup- 
port so heartily given the Government, they can 
hardly look in vain. 



THE END 



APPENDIX 



"dollar diplomacy" 



The relation of government to foreign investment by 
its citizens is one of correlative obligation and author- 
ity, general obligation to protect the citizens' rights, 
and authority to control the citizens' course by giving 
great or little protection, or none at all. In the dis- 
charge of its obligation the duty of government is to 
measure the protection to be given any investment 
first of all by the advantage of that investment to the 
nation; and secondarily to mete out that protection 
in proportion to the right of the investor to expect 
protection. 

The authority correlated with the obligation to pro- 
tect is that involved in the power to vary, in accord- 
ance with the criteria above cited, the degree of pro- 
tection, if any, to be afforded in the case of a given in- 



* Monograph by Huntington Wilson, on "The Relation 
of Government to Foreign Investments," reprinted from 
the Annals of the American Academy of Political and 
Social Science, November, 1916. 

240 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 241 

vestment. Without any legislation on the subject, the 
government's authority is automatically of deter- 
minative potentiality in this question of foreign in- 
vestment in all countries except those of the highest 
credit and stability. And even in the case of such 
countries, an adverse intimation from Washington 
would tend to have a blighting moral effect upon a 
proposed investment of American capital. 

From the days of the struggle of Phoenicians, Car- 
thaginians, Greeks and Romans in the Mediterranean 
down to to-day, it has been power, and above all sea 
power, which alone has protected foreign trade. Even 
in these allegedly softer times, we must admit, now 
at least, that it is only under the shadow of the great 
powers, those prepared or potentially able to use great 
power, that small countries like Belgium, or even rela- 
tively weak, although great, countries can, as inde- 
pendent nations, carry on a big foreign trade. The 
governmental relation to foreign investment in its 
authority and obligations presupposes and demands 
power. 

THE RELATION OF THE GOVERNMENT TO FOREIGN 
ENTERPRISE 

For the purposes of this discussion, we shall do well 
to consider the relation of government to foreign trade 
and to all sorts of foreign enterprises, as well as to 



242 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

investment in the narrower sense of shares and bonds, 
because the same principles apply to all alike. It 
may at first seem an extreme view, but one may go 
farther and apply similar general principles even to 
the relation of government to the presence of its citi- 
zens to reside for any purpose in any part of the 
world. 

The relation we are considering is one to be dealt 
with by the diplomatic department. Like other ques- 
tions of real and statesmanlike diplomacy, this ques- 
tion derives its importance and its charm and interest 
from its farspread ramifications and concatenations. 
It carries into the far future and it brings many 
sciences out of the "conference stage" to an entirely 
practical application in every day international busi- 
ness. Here, as elsewhere, diplomacy becomes every- 
thing that concerns one's country, fostered through 
its foreign relations. 

During the four years preceding the present admin- 
istration, when Mr. Knox, as Secretary of State, gave 
a new definiteness, intelligibility and practicalness to 
American diplomacy, the policy toward foreign invest- 
ment was epitomized thus: "The Department (of 
State) will give all proper support to legitimate and 
beneficial American enterprises in foreign countries." 
This formula was the invariable answer to the prudent 
investor desiring to know in advance what would be 
done for him if, through no fault of his own, he got 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 243 

into trouble, due, say, to oppression or failure to pro- 
tect on the part of some foreign government. 

Now the government's obligation to protect a par- 
ticular American interest abroad, must, in its dis- 
charge, be measured and meted out, as has been said, 
in proportion to the benefit of that particular interest 
to the nation as a whole. Whatever influence or force 
the government may exert in the world is the prestige 
and power of the nation. Consider this collective 
power, moral or physical, as a great reservoir. The 
executive branch of our government has constitutional 
authority to conduct foreign relations untrammelled 
except by the authority of the Senate when it comes 
to a treaty, by the authority of the whole Congress 
when it comes to an appropriation of money, and in 
some few other respects. This authority is so appall- 
ingly broad, one may remark, that it becomes of vital 
necessity that the United States should have funda- 
mentals of foreign policy that are accepted by the 
whole nation, to be permanent bases of action in all 
specific questions of importance. Otherwise the Amer- 
ican people can be involved by the executive without 
referendum in any folly during every four years be- 
tween presidential elections. Even party platforms 
about foreseen questions are no safeguard, for we see 
them violated, as in the Panama Canal tolls question 
with Great Britain. Now this startling breadth of 
executive authority in diplomacy places the executive, 



244 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

as trustee of the nation's international influence, 
under obligations of the greatest solemnity and weight. 
Therefore how much thought must the Secertary of 
State take before turning the tap of the reservoir and 
drawing off for the protection of a foreign enterprise 
a measure of the national prestige and power en- 
trusted by the people to his care ! 



"dollar diplomacy' ' 



This theme and its illustration by example lead to 
an exposition of what has been called "Dollar Di- 
plomacy.' ' It might better be described as common 
sense diplomacy, in contradistinction from the di- 
plomacy of perfunctoriness or that of whimsical sen- 
timentality from which the United States has suffered 
so much. It is submitted, moreover, that one who will 
carefully study the so-called "Dollar Diplomacy" will 
be fully convinced that it was a diplomacy of common 
sense in the highest sense of that term, that is, a di- 
plomacy determined by the application of scientific 
principles and sound thinking to plain facts studied 
and understood as they really are ; a diplomacy pre- 
ferring to build for the long future, rather than to 
dogmatize for the moment's expediency; preferring 
the truth to a beautiful idealization not resting upon 
truth. 

Now the national advantage of a foreign investment 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 245 

may consist in (1) political advantages or (2) eco- 
nomic advantage. Service to humanity is not men- 
tioned separately because charity begins at home; 
because it is America's first duty to serve America; 
because America, as a government, can amply serve 
humanity in spheres and in ways in which America 
also serves itself ; and because if it does that, the serv- 
ice to humanity may be considered by diplomacy, 
which is not, by the way, an eleemosynary institution, 
as merged in the service of America, that is, in Ameri- 
can political advantage. Those who dissent from this 
view and yield to our national foible for grandiloquent 
sentimentality ought to reflect that a trustee, however 
admirable his private charities, would be put in jail if 
he used trust funds for benefactions ; and that exactly 
so the American executive defrauds the nation if he 
uses its prestige and power in a diplomacy directed 
by sentimentality to the service of humanity in gen- 
eral, instead of a diplomacy seeking the political and 
economic advantage of the American taxpayer, the 
American nation. 

POLITICAL ADVANTAGES OF FOREIGN INVESTMENTS 

Political advantage (1) then, comprises such fac- 
tors as (a) strengthening American influence in 
spheres where it ought to predominate over any other 
foreign influence on account of reasons of fund a- 



246 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

mental policy, like the Monroe Doctrine, or of military 
strategy or of neighborhood. Such a sphere is " Latin 
America," where our interest increases in intensity 
from a vanishing minimum at Cape Horn northward 
to reach its maximum in the zone of the Caribbean 
Sea, the neighborhood of the Panama Canal, and in 
Mexico. In this category falls also, for example, the 
discharge of our historic obligation to Liberia and 
the preservation of that little country as a pied-a-terre 
in Africa, of possible potential value to us for com- 
merce or for the emigration of African Americans. 
Such political advantage ranks highest. Next comes 
(b) the maintenance of a traditional position, favor- 
able to our trade where trade may go by political 
favor, as in the Chinese Empire. Other cases of politi- 
cal advantage would be (c) the strengthening of our 
friendship with other great powers, or (d) with coun- 
tries where it is wise to pre-empt a share in a dawning 
development, like Turkey, or (e) with countries whose 
markets are especially valuable. The cases merge so 
gradually into one another as to make clear-cut classi- 
fication difficult. This is true also of the division of 
political from economic advantage. The idea is that 
in some cases trade is important primarily for its po- 
litical effects through mutual interest and association, 
while in others a good political relation is valued (if 
not for safety and advantage in actual co-operation or 
alliances) for its tendency to favor trade. The stu- 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 247 

dent of American diplomacy will readily enough place 
our relations with different countries in appropriate 
categories even without an attempt at nicer classifica- 
tion than is here intimated. 

THE ECONOMIC ADVANTAGES 

Inasmuch as political advantage comprises whatever 
touches national security, the first place in import- 
ance, among economic advantages, must be given to 
(a) those investments or enterprises which most pro- 
mote vital political interest. Next most important is 
economic advantage to the nation and usually identi- 
cal with (a) are (b) foreign investments or enter- 
prises which establish permanent and valuable mar- 
kets for trade, while at the same time subserving 
political strength where the policy of this country 
demands that it be strong if we are to have security 
and tranquillity. Other cases are (c) investments or 
enterprises which have these same purely material 
advantages while carrying with them some political 
advantage as well, as, for example, in safeguarding 
our Chinese trade; or (d) those investments or enter- 
prises which serve in giving us a commercial standing 
in some valuable market where development may be 
pre-empted by others if a footing be not early obtained 
(like Turkey) ; or (e) in cementing friendship with 
our natural allies, as Canada and the English-speaking 



248 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

peoples generally; or (f) in bringing profit and em- 
ployment to the American people in general. 

In the encouragement of foreign enterprise, diplo- 
macy must beware of forcing it into spheres where 
vexatious conflict with the special spheres of influence 
and interest of other countries outweighs all commer- 
cial gain to be looked for. Every great power has 
some "doctrines" that it conceives to be as vital to 
it as the Monroe Doctrine is considered here. Korea 
and Manchuria, Persia and Siam, come to mind as 
examples of territory where, while conducting ordi- 
nary trade, we should be wasting our energies to at- 
tempt intensive development. In return we should 
gradually crowd out from our own sphere of special 
interest foreign interests wherever they are predomi- 
nant to an uncomfortable extent and quite beyond the 
requirements of an ordinary trade outside the spheres 
of special interest of the foreign governments con- 
cerned. 

Quite aside from this common sense circumscribing 
of our spheres of greatest effort to make them comport 
with the facts of world politics, it is still true that 
there is not enough American capital yet available for 
foreign investment thoroughly to cover the duty of 
consolidating our economic position in the spheres 
where that necessity is most obvious. Also, there is 
a lack of men trained for this work and willing to 
reside under tropical rain, amidst mountain peaks, on 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 249 

broad savannas, and in ancient cities of manners and 
ideas quite alien to our own, in order to carry it on. 
''God gives a man his relatives; he chooses his 
friends. ' ' A nation is less fortunate. The hazards of 
history have made us a sphere of vital interest which 
we have to cultivate, however difficult it be. 

PROPER SUPPORT TO LEGITIMATE ENTERPRISES 

Let us return to the formula. "The Department 
(of State) will give all proper support to legitimate 
and beneficial American enterprises in foreign coun- 
tries. " A legitimate enterprise must be honest and 
fair, and just to the foreigners concerned. But it may 
be legitimate so far as the interested American is con- 
cerned and beneficial to him individually while not 
beneficial to the nation. Such would be the case if 
the dangers of seriously involving this country in 
fresh obligations outweighed any national advantage ; 
if the investment diverted from channels of real na- 
tional advantage money that might otherwise serve 
that advantage either abroad or at home; or if the 
project involved offending a valued friend among the 
nations. To merit the strongest governmental sup- 
port, the foreign investment or enterprise must be 
really beneficial to the nation. 

In the formula, the phrase "all proper support" is 
advisedly indefinite. The Secretary of State must 



250 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

reserve the question of how much support will be 
"proper" in a given case, because when the question 
is asked it is a hypothetical one ; because the question 
will be a political question, to be affected, perhaps, by- 
changing conditions ; and because, above all, it will be 
one involving the careful consideration of subtle meas- 
ures of national advantage — which is the first meas- 
ure, as the citizens' right is the second measure, of 
the government's support. The government's obli- 
gation is its duty to the citizen, but the coefficient of 
that duty is its duty to the nation. 

Proper support is the discharge of the government's 
obligation, limited by its variant authority or power, 
expressed in terms of action, diplomatic, or in the 
last resort, warlike. And that proper support is the 
duty to the citizen plus or minus the sum of political 
and economic national advantage. 

This almost mathematical expression of the theory 
of "Dollar Diplomacy," to use the approbrious nick- 
name, may assist a clear understanding of a subject 
deplorably little considered by our countrymen. Il- 
lustration, however, will perhaps supply vividness to 
a dry statement. 



APPLYING "DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 



Without law, it is, of course, only where the citizen 
thinks he may ultimately need his government's help 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 251 

to "pull his chestnuts out of the fire" that he can 
really be controlled. He will buy Anglo-French bonds 
in full faith in the honor and stability of Great Bri- 
tain and France. If he jumped into a pet private 
preserve of Great Britain or France and engaged in 
enterprises subsersive of some policy of "protection, 
guidance and control" (to quote the classic of Japan- 
ese aggression in Korea), it is not intended to imply 
that his government would abandon him to his fate. 
It would seek equitable damages for him, but prob- 
ably not specific performance. So it was, in principle, 
to give an analagous example, when the American ad- 
visers were forced out of Persia by Russia and Eng- 
land. American influence in Persia was of no account 
to our national interest. An equitable adjustment 
doing justice in a general way to our citizens, would 
in such a case be proper policy. If, on the other hand, 
those advisers had been in a country where American 
influence was of national importance, the American 
government must have resisted their dismissal and 
insisted upon specific performance, although the con- 
tracts were no more binding in the one case than in 
the other. 

The convention with Santo Domingo, the agreement 
with Cuba involving certain public works, the conven- 
tion of 1911 with Honduras (rendered abortive by the 
vote of an adverse party majority in the Senate) , the 
old arrangement and convention with Nicaragua, car- 



252 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

ried out after a fashion by the present administration, 
the loan policy with China, which the present admin- 
istration promptly killed and now has made an un- 
successful effort to resuscitate, — all these involved for- 
eign investment of such great and unquestionable na- 
tional advantage that the government was an active 
participant in them; and, by urging on the investors 
to lend themselves as instrumentalities of foreign 
policy, the government clothed those investors with 
rights to protection of especial dignity. 

Since this is not a discussion of American diplomacy 
at large, but is confined, so far as practicable, to one 
phase of that subject, those transactions need not be 
described at length. Suffice it to say that the object 
of the Central American policy was "to substitute dol- 
lars for bullets/ ' to create a material prosperity which 
should wean the Central Americans from their usual 
preoccupation of revolution. Those countries have 
great natural wealth. Lack of capital, lack of skill, 
and still more the absence of any guarantee against 
confiscation and destruction due to the frequent revo- 
lutions when law and order are thrown overboard, 
prevent the development of their natural wealth by 
the people themselves. The same conditions throttle 
their export trade and destroy their purchasing 
power. Attacks upon American interests, and even 
upon the personal safety of American planters and 
others engaged in those countries, call for our govern- 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 253 

merit's protection. The similar jeopardy of European 
interests demands, as an unavoidable corollary of the 
Monroe Doctrine, the protection of the American gov- 
ernment. For the frequent interventions, moral or 
physical, thus necessitated, we had no convenient base. 
With great pertinacity certain far-away European 
powers, with an effrontery engendered by the inchoate 
state of American foreign policy, have been at great 
pains to poach upon our preserves in the Caribbean 
and even on the Isthmus itself. In Central America, 
as in Columbia in theory, there was the question of an 
alternative inter-oceanic canal route, and that was a 
basis inconveniently open for the pre-emption of a 
special interest which we could not afford to see go 
to others than ourselves. Trade with Central America 
was retarded by the lack of railways and by financial 
instability. The ports of our southern states, the 
logical centers of this rich trade, were being deprived 
by those adverse conditions of a profit due them from 
the facts of geography. It is true that one or two 
of the republics of Central America are in far better 
condition than the others. To cite a case where the 
political and economic advantages are both of the first 
rank and where, therefore, the measure of govern- 
mental support should be at its highest, I will refer 
to the policy toward Nicaragua, which illustrates only 
more completely what should be the spirit of our 
policy throughout the zone of the Caribbean. Indeed 



254 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

as now implemented our policy in effect is the same in 
principle in Panama, Cuba, Santo Domingo and Haiti. 

OUR POLICY TOWARD NICARAGUA 

In Nicaragua a New York bank of the highest stand- 
ing was induced to invest in the financial rehabilita- 
tion of the country, its transactions giving it an inter- 
est in the railways and in the customs revenues, which 
it is always desirable to remove from the reach of 
revolutionary depredations. Americans were engaged 
as financial advisers, as claims commissioners, and in 
other important capacities. A convention was signed 
to give the United States a naval station in the Gulf of 
Fonseca, dominating three of the republics. A per- 
petual option upon the Nicaraguan canal route was 
assured us. A large sum of money was to be advanced 
Nicaragua for its most pressing needs, but to be ex- 
pended only under American supervision. The full 
fruition of this plan was postponed by partisan oppo- 
sition in the Senate, but it was later taken over, in a 
general way, by the present administration and may 
now, it is hoped, meet a kinder fate. An outstanding 
feature of this particular policy is its effort to help 
our neighbors to help themselves and to do so in prac- 
tical ways, which advance at the same time the very 
real and quite legitimate and, indeed, the inevitable 
interests of our own country. 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 255 

The Nicaraguan arrangements are so comprehensive 
that they serve to illustrate many phases of the same 
policy we have seen pursued in Cuba, in Panama, in 
Haiti, in Honduras. The public revenues, especially 
the customs dues, must be placed out of reach of the 
revolutionary robber or the dictator. Capital must 
be brought in to establish peaceful husbandry and un- 
molested industry. Education and civilization must 
bring justice. A guiding hand must prevent foreign 
entanglements, which, under the Monroe Doctrine, 
straightway involve us. Even if the Monroe Doctrine 
had never been announced, common prudence would 
to-day force upon us the same policy from our south- 
ern border throughout the zone of the Caribbean. 

THE LAW OF NATIONAL SURVIVAL 

No far-seeing policy, but a natural human move- 
ment, accounts for the vast American investment in 
Mexico and for the penetration of thousands and thou- 
sands of Americans into Mexican territory as planters 
and miners and workers. Here a natural law and a 
political theory work together, as is the case when- 
ever the political theory is sound. There are so many 
analogies between biology and international evolution 
that one may invoke a sort of "international biology." 
The march of civilization brooks no violation of the 
law of the survival of the fittest. Neighboring coun- 



256 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

tries comprise an environment. The strongest will 
dominate that environment. Sentimental phrases 
about the sovereignty of weaker countries will no more 
permit them to run amuck with impunity than rant- 
ing about individual rights will permit an outrageous 
citizen to annoy a municipality and escape the police. 
The biological law of the tendency to revert to the 
lower type as the higher attributes are disused is at 
work among nations ; and nature, in its rough method 
of uplift, gives sick nations strong neighbors and takes 
its inexorable course with private enterprise and di- 
plomacy as its instruments. And this course is the 
best in the long run, for all concerned and for the 
world. The murder of two or three German mission- 
aries in far-off China, cost China Kaichow and prac- 
tically a province. The murder of many Americans in 
nearby Mexico, where by every law of neighborhood 
and policy they had a special right to be and to be 
protected, has cost Mexico so far — the reading of a 
great many communications. Life is priceless; but 
what of the investors, great and small ? Here is a case 
where political and economic advantage to the nation 
are at a high level, where the government 's obligation 
to protect connotes a great degree of support as 
proper. This is so because no field of investment is 
more natural than that over the border, which fact 
gives the citizen the right to expect support, subject 
to the national interest concerned, in this case a high 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 257 

coefficient. If so much be granted, the support, it has 
been said, is limited by its (the government's) va- 
riant authority or power. Since no one doubts its 
power, our government's task then becomes one of 
ways and means, with the evident duty of sparing so 
far as possible our own blood and treasure. The 
seizing and holding of revenues amply to cover all 
actual damages at once suggests itself as a practical 
measure and one readily assimilable with the chas- 
tisement and chastening due from us if we do not 
repudiate the duties imposed upon us in the nature of 
things by laws as real as those of biology. 

This digression is perhaps excusable as anticipating 
the question of ways and means of protecting foreign 
investments and enterprises in various cases which 
differ as widely as the one just described differs from 
an economic question with a first-rate power. There, 
too, we bungle and are unprepared. We lack the 
weapons of a sliding-scale tariff, with discretion in the 
executive to force justice to our interests by the threat 
of effective and prompt retaliation. 

THE SIX-POWER LOAN POLICY IN CHINA 

The six-power loan policy in China is in point upon 
this question of how the government would protect 
its citizens' investments. Aside from the high repute 
of the Chinese people for commercial morality, what 



258 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

with the turbulent conditions of the country and its 
distance from us (except in the Philippines), one 
might say that the American Government could ill 
afford to undertake to protect its citizens in great in- 
vestments there. In China we have a traditional posi- 
tion of friendly concern and a commerce that once 
promised very well. But we have not the political 
mandate of a cardinal principle of policy nor the nat- 
ural mandate of neighborhood as we have in Mexico. 

Mr. Knox " pooled " our interests in vast railway 
constructions and currency reform, involving huge 
investments of capital, with the interests of five other 
great powers. In this way, America secured its share 
in those lucrative undertakings while its share of re- 
sponsibility in protection was only one-sixth of what 
it otherwise would have been. 

Let us further examine that Chinese policy which 
the present administration in a heat of partisanship 
so ruthlessly reversed, to learn later, as it did in re- 
spect to a number of other matters, that foreign policy 
is not domestic politics. We may be our "brother's 
keeper' ' in the case of Mexico. We are certainly not 
China's keeper. I do not therefore attach to the 
purely political aspect of our Chinese policy quite 
the same importance that some do. There is working 
in the Far East an "international biology" that we 
have neither duty nor interest in radically interfering 
with. Times have changed since Mr. Hay expressed 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 259 

in idealizations about the "integrity" of China the 
good will America had always felt for that empire. 
However, we wanted and we still want the "open 
door" of ordinary equality of commercial opportun- 
ity. Before showing how Mr. Knox's policy served 
those practical ends, the political aspect may be 
touched on, although it is rather one of sentiment than 
one related to a policy of the first class that a nation 
would fight alone for. 

Naturally enough, Russia and Japan have designs 
upon outlying Chinese territory and certain Chinese 
provinces. Manifestly, to concatenate great interests 
of theirs with great interests of four other powers pre- 
ferring to preserve China pretty well intact would 
tend to create a community of interest in the preserva- 
tion of China's integrity. If two men with certain 
intentions were chained to four men with other in- 
tentions, the course of the group would differ from the 
untramelled progress of the first two men. Thus, 
without any offensive or radical interference with 
other nations' natural expansion, the United States, 
with Great Britain, France and Germany, would have 
had a share in the first practical arrangement ever 
suggested to work with any effect along the lines of 
the rather illusory declarations of Mr. Hay. # 



♦Quite recently (May 18, 1918) the President expressed the 
high hope that the triumph of our cause in the war might 
"... make the whole world democratic in the sense of 
community of interest and of purpose." It is interesting to 



260 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KNOX POLICY TOWARD CHINA 

Turning from this now more or less chimerical con- 
sideration, we note the really brilliant statesmanship 
of Mr. Knox in placing us, with no danger and with 
only a small share of responsibility, and that divided 
with powerful partners, in a position not only of dig- 
nified equality, but of actual leadership in the large 
concerns of the Chinese Empire! To realize how im- 
portant that role was to our general Chinese trade, 
one must know China. Besides indirect effects, the 
Chinese arrangement gave us such economic national 
advantages as these: American engineers would be 
appointed and American railway materials would be 
used on our proportional part of the whole railway 
system. That meant money to American industry. 
As to the bankers' profits in the loans and the ulti- 
mate bondholders ' income, they were good for the 
country, too, economically, but were so clearly a 
means to a greater end that the bankers had to be 
urged into the whole transaction, and, during its diffi- 



note in retrospect the fact that the crux of Mr. Knox's Far 
Eastern policy was precisely the conscious effort to do, in a 
practical way, just this, so far as all the great powers (for 
Italy and Austria-Hungary were touched also by the nego- 
tiations) were concerned in the whole region of China. It 
is also interesting to reflect that the principles of the policy 
referred to are likely to play in due time an important part 
in future instrumentalities of a practical sort devised to mini- 
mize international conflict in various parts of the world. 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 261 

cult course, often urged to remain interested. If this 
had not been done, and if American bankers had not 
responded with a good deal of patriotism, the biggest 
transactions ever undertaken in China would have 
proceeded without the least participation by the coun- 
try which had officially talked most of China's op- 
portunities. 

Eeference to the direct economic advantages to the 
nation to be found in the railway loans to China 
brings us to a few last comments upon the measures 
of economic advantage in foreign investments. 
Lately a gentleman prominent among those who are 
at last making a campaign for foreign trade spoke 
of Russia as a great field for American enterprise 
and in doing so spoke particularly of the opportuni- 
ties for branch factories. Now this question of "ex- 
traterritorial enterprise ' ' is a familiar one to the prac- 
tical diplomatist. A branch factory in a foreign 
country may be very profitable to the capitalist, and 
it will be better than nothing in so far as it brings 
money into the United States ; but it does not directly 
pay American wages or enrich and build up American 
communities, as do great foreign orders to be executed 
in American factories at home. Therefore the for- 
eign branch factory is of relatively slight national ad- 
vantage and has relatively small claim on the benevo- 
lent interest of the government. Such, by the way, 
would not be the case of an American factory estab- 



262 THE PERIL OF HIFALUTIN 

lished where it was especially desired to strengthen 
the national influence, particularly if the factory was 
not in point-blank competition with a home factory 
and in that way deflecting wages from Americans to 
cheaper foreign labor on the spot. 

THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD GUIDE FOREIGN INVESTMENTS 

The necessity of having our exports paid for ulti- 
mately in goods or securities (and not always in gold) 
makes it of interest to the government to encourage 
investment in certain countries. We cannot, for ex- 
ample, buy the coffee crop of all Latin America. 
Indeed, to encourage here, to deter there; in short, 
more or less to guide foreign investment, is a proper 
function of government. There should not be obli- 
gation without authority. The value of our home 
investments rests, in the last resort, upon our munici- 
pal law. The value of our foreign investments rests, 
in the last resort, upon our diplomacy, the conduct of 
our foreign policy. The efficacy of these depends 
upon our prestige and our military power, and these 
last are the possession of the nation. 

There would thus be a logic in a requirement of 
official permission to list foreign securities in our 
markets or to undertake certain foreign enterprises. 
For the exercise of this discretion we should need a 
little law. It might be vested in a small committee, 



"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" 263 

for example, of competent officials of the Department 
of State, of the Treasury and Federal Reserve Board, 
with the Chairman of the Foreign Relations and 
Foreign Affairs committees of Congress. 

It seems, after the question has been mooted for 
years, that we still need a law (perhaps!) to keep the 
Sherman Anti-Trust law from frightening our manu- 
facturers and merchants out of their right to com- 
bine to compete with Europe in foreign commerce. 
Only now have our laws a little helped our bankers to 
establish themselves abroad and to give our trade and 
enterprise the needed facilities. "We are very back- 
ward in foreign affairs, commercial, financial, and 
political, and disposed to neglect all that hard ground 
that lies between great visions and small details. The 
end of the war will leave with the problems of for- 
eign investment and enterprise and the government's 
relation thereto a new urgency. And, laws or no 
laws, if we are to deal wisely with them, the realities 
of American diplomacy must become matters of con- 
scious concern and intelligent interest to American 
citizens. Only so can government be compelled, under 
our system, to perform its task of leadership, to make 
effective its proper relation to foreign investment and 
enterprise. 



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